One-act black comedy; set in a modern day city
Produced Off-Off Broadway, 1985, 1986 Seattle Rep 1988, Tennessee Williams Festival, 1999
Co-winner of Jane Chambers Play Award, 1986
Three roles: two male, one female or cross
Synopsis:
A full length contemporary one act black comedy with 2 male and 1 female (but possibly also male) characters and one set, the play takes place completely on an eighteenth floor rooftop terrace in the heart of Greenwich Village. David Elias, a trendy, somewhat jaded thirty-something graphic arts designer lives almost entirely within Manhattan's chic gay ghetto.
As the play begins, David is confronted by a most unusual problem: Sandy Evans, a mid-twenties straight Midwesterner whom has moved to New York for love and career. Fired from his job across the street, with his advances to bank clerk Betty Sue Ulrich rebuffed, Sandy has made a crucial decision -- at exactly one o'clock he plans to throw himself off David's rooftop. He plans to land in front of Betty Sue as she goes on lunch break, as well as in front of his ex-boss and ex-fellow employees: they'll all be sorry.
David however has his own problems, and they don't include a suicide jumper. -- even if Sandy is, in David's own words, "Semi-cute. Well not un-cute." David is in debt, he's late with promised jobs, his love life is in shambles, and he's just fled from his summer house share. In short, he's totally fed up and he wants Sandy off the roof any way possible but instantly!Their confrontation, interrupted and commented upon by David's dizzy next door neighbor, the soap-opera loving Astrologer Mrs. B -- becomes an extended joust between two very different young men with very different backgrounds and philosophies of life. Their duel -- or is it a dance? --- is laced with humor, anger, flirtation, and semi-nudity, potential sex, ending with an all too brief moment of understanding and fellowship.
One O'Clock Jump is a dark laugh machine probing what lies at the heart of our selfishness, our vanity, and our real desires.
One O'Clock Jump was co-winner of the Jane Chambers new play award. It was first produced Off-Broadway by Meridian Gay Theater and has since been revived several times around the country, including at the 1999 Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans.