Washington Stage Guild to Present SHAW'S SHORTS Featuring Shaw's One-Act Plays

Shaw's Shorts – three witty, political and light-hearted short plays by George Bernard Shaw, The Washington Stage Guild's playwright of choice, will continue the 2024-2025 Season of Determination. The trio of plays directed by WSG Company Member Laura Giannarelli (Dorothy's Dictionary, The Good Doctor) features Thomas Daniels, Morgan Duncan, Patricia Hurley, and Leah Packer. Performances run November 21 to December 15, 2024, with four Pay-What-You-Can previews November 21-23 at the Washington Stage Guild's home, The Undercroft Theatre in the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue, NW.

Special Free Post-Show Event: "Shaw's Other Island: GBS and the Politics of Ireland" will take place following the Sunday, December 8 matinee (approx. start time 4:45pm). Presentation by Christopher Griffin about Shaw's relationship with Ireland: 20 years growing up in Dublin, Home Rule, views on the World Wars and a variety of other topics. Mr. Griffin studied literature in Dublin, the city of Wilde and Shaw. Since 1992 he has taught courses at Politics and Prose bookstore. He was a lecturer on 23 Smithsonian Journeys. He has reviewed theatre since the 1970s and has written program notes for playbills, including The Abbey Theatre.

 

ABOUT THE PLAY

A fresh look at two of GB Shaw's most delicious one-act plays, first produced by Stage Guild in 2007. 

In O'Flaherty V.C., A Recruiting Pamphlet, the winner of the Victoria Cross for outstanding bravery, is confronted by his Irish-to-the-core Catholic mother, incensed to discover he's being fighting for the British. In the imaginative The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, Will Shakespeare goes to the palace to meet his Dark Lady to whom he addressed sonnets of love, only to find Her Majesty the Queen instead – followed by the Dark Lady herself who lambasts them both! Plus, The Interlude at the Playhouse, a comic curtain-raiser in which a nervous theatre owner must give a big speech at a gala opening, but his wife may have to save the day.

“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” – GB Shaw

FROM DIRECTOR Laura Giannarelli

“I relish the opportunity to explore these three short plays by GBS. Perhaps not as well-known as his full-length plays, they nevertheless showcase his wit and insights into human nature in a way that still speaks to a 21st Century audience. Interlude at the Playhouse premiered in 1907, written for an actual theatre opening. A fizzy bit of fun, it gives us a chance to enjoy Shaw at his most light-hearted. The Dark Lady of the Sonnets was written in 1910 for a performance raising funds to establish a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespeare. Here, Mr. Shaw is again in a playful mode, teasing that other towering playwright of the English language, giving us thereby a playful Elizabethan fantasy. The third play, O'Flaherty V.C., A Recruiting Pamphlet, 1915, is a comic look at war that nevertheless carried a strong antiwar message at a time when England was mired in World War I. As we in America watch devastating wars happening in many places around the globe, Shaw's words resonate still, even as we laugh at his wit.”

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Washington Stage Guild has produced 28 of Shaw's plays (including several one act plays).

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