Two Plays by Carl Oprey

Carl Oprey writes prose fiction, journalism and stage and screen. His screenplays have been commissioned by Searchlight Pictures, Channel 4, Scottish Screen and BBC Films. He originated and developed television series in the UK and US. His stage plays have been performed in London, Los Angeles and New York. Short fiction has been published in Queer Episodes: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose (Little Brown, 2014), and longlisted in the BBC First Words Short Story Award (2016). His novel, The Man Who, was longlisted for the Polari Prize. Print and radio journalism has appeared in Ragazine, G Scene, KPFK Los Angeles and IMRU Radio, Los Angeles. For ten years he wrote the monthly magazine column for the LGBTQ+ publication, GScene, under the guise of Queer activist, Charlie Bauer PhD. He’s had work performed at festivals and events in Brighton, London, Liverpool, Los Angeles and New York. He’s lived and worked in New York, Los Angeles, London, Liverpool, Moscow, Jordan, Cairo, Kerala, Carlisle, 29 Palms and Geneva. He is based between New York and Liverpool, where he teaches at NYU and the Liverpool Screen School (LJMU). His novel in progress is The Lawn of Sleeping Soldiers.

Preview

Praise for the Author

“Raw, real and unrelenting. In these two short plays, the past collides with the present with devastating intensity. Seams burst and secrets come undone. Relationships are torn apart. Oprey’s take on truth and lies is absolutely riveting. In his short plays ‘argumento:’ and ‘Rabbit’, Oprey masterfully achieves an unwinding of truths, as wounds from the past resurface, unhealed and raw. Clever, swift and captivating.”

• Diane Connell (DJ Connell) author of: Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar and The Impossible Life of Ricky Bird.

“In argumento: an argument ricochets from boyfriend to girlfriend’s father to girlfriend to boyfriend to father in a kaleidoscope of emotional hard truths. In Rabbit, a boy’s rabbit is the touchstone for a long-held secret between a man and wife. Carl Oprey’s two plays – fragmented on the page in columns of text – enact the inevitable alienating forces of life: we may be talking, but is anyone listening?”

• Andrea Mason, writer and artist: Waste Extractions.

“Carl Oprey’s characters talk themselves towards a past they haven’t prepared themselves to confront and dramatizes the difficulty of articulating the intense confusion that past traumas spread into the future.”

• Douglas Cowie, author of Owen Noone and the Marauder. Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago.