The Jim Lehrer Plays
It's the first debate of the 2004 presidential campaign and President George W. Bush is determined to kill PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer live on stage. His opponent, Senator Kerry, agrees Lehrer should die—"Indeed, what else tonight besides the manner of Jim Lehrer's execution could be of interest to any man?"—but disagrees on the matter of when and where. 12 years later, Jim Lehrer sits alone in his spacious and indifferently furnished DC suburban home narrating to himself the news of the day. That is until his roommate—also Jim Lehrer—rushes in to warn him of an angry mob descending on their location. Collected here for the first time, Chicago playwright Mickle Maher's The Jim Lehrer Plays—The Strangerer and Jim Lehrer and the Theater and its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double—connect and critique their times' political insanities while pulling inspiration from Camus, Artaud, and Maher's favorite news personality, Jim Lehrer.
Mickle Maher's plays have appeared Off-Broadway and around the world, and have been supported by grants from the NEA, the Rockefeller MAP fund, and Creative Capital. They include: It is Magic; There is a Happiness That Morning Is; Song About Himself; Small Ball; An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening; The Hunchback Variations; The Strangerer; Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer’s Double; Spirits to Enforce; Cyrano (translator); The Cabinet; Lady Madeline; The Pine; and An Actor Prepares (an adaptation of Stanislavsky's seminal book). He is a cofounder of Chicago’s Theater Oobleck, and has taught playwriting and related subjects at the University of Chicago, Columbia College, and Northwestern University.
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