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Plays By Steven Thomas Bost



  The Googie Bears

  • Comedy
  • 2M, 4W (adaptable)
  • Estimated running time: 25 min. Synopsis:

         It's the most-watched, most-beloved, animal-oriented, education-based children's variety show in all of central western Canada. But for Biggy, Twiggy, Ziggy, and Piggy these accolades somehow just aren't enough. The jaded, media-savvy children's performers yearn for more than the glory of public access ... until one day when their prayers are answered in the form of an offer from that great, global TV monolith — Nickelodeon.

         At an impromptu pre-taping strategy session, the four dazzled bears haggle and dream about the offer before them on the stump. Fame, fortune, and lunchbox deals seem certain, but for one large, mustard yellow obstacle: Quigley, the fifth bear. Determined to cut the most dedicated member out of the deal, the others find they've gotten more than they bargained for as Quigley vows not to surrender his intellectual property without a fight.

         Civility shreds, loyalties crack, and the fur flies as five grown adults in bear costumes battle toward a breathless finish and the shocking return of a traitor to the Googie Bears' midst.
    •   Pamplona or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Running of the Bulls

  • Comedy
  • 3M, 2W
  • Estimated running time: 25 min.
     
    Synopsis:

         Comic book artist Glenn and his girlfriend Sandy don't have the greatest relationship, but at least it's safe. Even that fragile comfort shreds, however, when they embark on an ill-timed tour of Europe, and somewhere between the Eiffel Tower and the canals of Venice Sandy skips out on her controlling beau. Shacking up with Kurt, a one-eyed adventurer with a flare for the dramatic and an unidentified accent, she eventually ends up in Pamplona, Spain, where soon to take place is the annual Festival de San Fermin, better known as the Running of the Bulls.

         There she meets the colorful expatriate denizens of a tacky tourist bar: Rocky, the SoCal bartender and Renee Field, his unhinged, Hemingway-obsessed boss. With the guidance of these two (also maimed, curiously) thrill-seekers, Sandy realizes she has only chance to undo the damage of her milquetoast relationship: throw caution to the wind and run with those bulls.

         But who should lurch into the bar minutes before go-time but Glenn — exhausted, broke, culture-shocked, and determined to stop Sandy from making a fatal mistake. As the frenzied minutes tick down and the rumble of the bulls grows, Glenn and Kurt tangle both physically and ideologically for the hand and heart of the newly-empowered Sandy.
    •   Civil War at the Screeching Eagle Monument

  • Comedy
  • 4M, 2W (adaptable)
  • Estimated running time: 35 min. Synopsis:

         Based on a truish story. Somewhere in America's heartland, Nature and a nasty rockslide have finally taken their toll on the Screeching Eagle, a Paleolithic, granite formation that bears a striking resemblance to our National Bird. Hit hardest by this catastrophe are the caretakers of the defunct tourist attraction, so megalomaniacal park Superintendent Ivan Concord does what any man in his position would do: seal off the borders, seize the campers, and declare the land a new sovereign nation.

         Capitalizing upon the chaos to realize his vision of a utopia, now-President Concord and his dedicated cabinet of park rangers set about the task of erecting bureaucracy in Paradise. There's Liam Running Coyote, eager second-in-command and Native American "enthusiast;" hay fever-ridden Barb, a tour guide who's never heard the term stress management; Sgt. Barrett Oldman, retired military man and self-styled Robert E. Lee for the new millennium; and Sid Hampshire, the dim ecologist unaware of his impending destiny. Finally, there's the ornery political prisoner — Alexis, a nature magazine writer in the wrong place at the right time.

         This time, it should work. It will work.

         In theory.

         But faster than you can say "Emancipation Proclamation" things fall apart. Bickering, partisan politics, and the President's proclivity for tanning threaten to upset the delicate balance. With pollution rampant and natural resources stretched to the limit, Sid revolts against his former boss, retreating to the foothills and sparking a surprisingly competent guerilla rebellion. As the dream of a hedonist's retirement slips through Concord's fingers, his fledgling nation devolves into a roiling battlefield of whizzing tranquilizer darts, liberated firefighting planes, and rampaging RV's.
    •   Darius Padeum's The Minervae

  • 4M, 6W (adaptable)
  • Estimated running time: 50 min.
     
    Synopsis:

         Strangely enough, history carries no record of the hapless pagan playwright Darius Padeum. His single extant work is a curious work penned in the late, late period of Rome, only about a third of which survived fire and plunder. The unlucky task fell to beleaguered translator Steven Bost to interpret not only the author's words but the meaning behind The Minervae.

         Is it tragedy or comedy? Only time will tell.

         It is the year 400 AD. Christianity is now the official religion of the Roman Empire, and paganism outlawed. All along the borders, bloodthirsty barbarian tribes threaten invasion. But the real rude awakening for the once-venerable goddess of wisdom Minerva is abandonment by Axon, her mortal lover, who has converted. Jilted and jealous, she embarks on a quest to win back her former followers — by any means necessary. But when she goes too far, the very destiny of Man teeters in peril.

         Standing in her way is a Who's Who of Bulfinch, as dysfunctional deities from Apollo to Venus, each with their own motives, employ every last trick, spell, and charm in their dwindling arsenal to stop Minerva. Recounted with an unmistakably post-modern slant, this is celestial civil war on a scale that promises to make The Iliad look like a family squabble at the dinner table.
    •   Kick The Keg

  • Comedy
  • 3M, 3W
  • Estimated running time: 45 min. Synopsis:

         Justin and January are dating. But January is drawn to the charismatic drifter Van, and so is Ren. Ken is after the mysterious Sandra. So is Justin. Confused? After a night of indulgence at Grogie's 4th of July kegger, things don't get any clearer, and what follows is a deconstructionist reconstruction, as these 6 characters plead their cases to the audience, learning as they go that the only thing harder than being themselves is acting out themselves.

         All this, plus the startling return of Sandra, the heroine of Pamplona or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Running of the Bulls, last seen dashing into almost certain death on Estafeta Street.
    •   The Man Who Broke Space/Time

  • Comedy
  • 4M
  • Estimated running time: 15 min.
     
    Synopsis:

         For any lover who's ever had a break-up that felt like the end of the world!

         The standard paradoxes apply when a Man on a street corner faces two simultaneous ultimatums: a future time traveler warns of society's devastation if he does not stand his date up, and a citizen of a ravaged parallel present begs him to go back in the past and correct his past standing-ups of the same wronged woman. Wracked with guilt and addled by causality, our hero learns that the only way to fight sci-fi cliché is with sci-fi cliché.