Dandelion, and other plays

This thesis consists of one full-length play, Dandelion, and two shorter plays. Dandelion is a dark farce about a group of people who escape to the "last vacant lot" from a world filled with buildings and pavement. The mad scientist who controls this lot is obsessed with the idea that he can make a brew from dandelions (virtually extinct) which will render humans impotent and stop the growth which is destroying the world. His cohorts include a wife given to burying things, a romantic poet who loves dandelions, a lively lady whose monomania is procreation and a 10-year-old girl who seems to be a representative of the forces of destruction who wants to take over the vacant lot. The play was given a professional performance by the New Play Centre in the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1972. "One Spring Morning" is a light comedy about the chance meeting of a young woman and a middle-aged man at a bus stop. Spring infects them causing the man to become both light hearted and light headed much to his embarrassment, if not sorrow, in another version of the battle of the sexes. The play was presented by The New Play Centre in the Vancouver Art Gallery in June 1972. "The Cliff" is a somewhat blacker comedy about belief, doubt and especially self doubt. A young man marks his twenty-first birthday with profound depression and throws himself off a suicide cliff. Miraculously he survives and is named the new messiah by a group of religious fanatics who have been watching the cliff and hoping for a saviour. Through their worship and his playing the role of a saviour, the young man becomes convinced that he is, indeed, immortal. There is one nagging doubt. One of his disciples is more pragmatic about the need for a leader than about the young man's immortality. To dispel his follower's doubt, the young man leaps a second time from the cliff. He doesn't survive. The play was first presented by the Vancouver Little Theatre in 1970Arts, Faculty ofGraduat