KAZORKIS IN EXTREMIS

KAZORKIS is a full-length play about a family unraveling on one balmy Spring afternoon. The patriarch of the (Lithuanian-American) Kazorkis family learns that his (Russian-American) arch-enemy vindictively intends to close down his salvage yard, putting him out of business. Over the course of the afternoon and evening, in an increasingly comical drunken state, Tony Kazorkis, with his reluctant Vietnamese assistant, plots an unlikely retaliation against his nemesis.

Tony’s two daughters, Betty and Sonja, have arrived at turning points in their own lives. Sonja is on the brink of divorce with Walter, and Betty may lose custody of her precocious son, Paulie, to her ex-husband, Martin. Walter and Martin are weary of their difficult wives – Sonja, being unresponsive and controlling, and Betty living only for the moment. But the husbands are not much better – Walter is having “a mid-life crisis, by damn” and Martin is angry and vengeful.

The playwright received a playwriting award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for this play. It received a staged reading at CantaStage at the Boston Center for the Arts and also from Ed Bullin’s NuPlay Project at Northeastern University.

Play is available through the author at turkeytrot1@comcast.net.