This anthology contains four of Blessing's earlier works: Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music; Eleemosynary; Independence; and Riches.

Four Plays

Literature & Fiction

Blessing, Lee

Dramas & Plays

Heinemann Drama

All of the plays in this book are resonate with Blessing's characteristic depth of human feeling and his insistence that the personal is the political.

Patient A and Other Plays

The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid

Concord Theatricals

THE STORY: The character of controversial baseball legend Ty Cobb is split into three differently aged versions of himself: The Peach, aged nineteen, at the beginning of his long career with the Detroit Tigers; Ty, in his early forties, at the end

Cobb.

Lee Blessing

Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Down the Road.

Dramatist's Play Service

Full Length Drama / The setting is the small town of Independence Iowa, the lifelong home of Evelyn Briggs. Her oldest daughter Kess, is a university professor in Minneapolis, but she has come home at the request of her sister Jo, who is concerned for Evelyn's mental health. Kess, a professed lesbian, wants to cut her family ties once and for all Jo, an incurable romantic and longtime virgin, has now become pregnant; while Sherry, salty tongued and amoral, wants only to finish high school so she can leave home for good. In the end, there is no accommodation possible but, instead, only a kind of arbitrary independence for each of the protagonists, as they come to realize that each must find her own heaven or hell in her own way. (Cast: 4 women Total Cast 4)

Independence (Acting Edition for Theater Productions)

THE STORY: Eve Wilfong, who lives over the Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music Bar, is paid a visit by her niece Catherine Empanger, a novice nun who's been asked to leave her convent. It seems Catherine suffers from a curious compulsion to

Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music.

Oldtimers Game.

A drama for 2 men and 2 women. The two rooms of the title are a windowless cubicle in Beirut where an American hostage is being held by Arab terrorists and a room in his home in the United States, which his wife has stripped of furniture so that, at least symbolically, she can share his ordeal. In fact the same room serves for both and is also the locale for imaginary conversations between the hostage and his wife, plus the setting for the real talks she has with a reporter and a State Department official. The former, an overly ambitious sort who hopes to develop the situation into a major personal accomplishment, tries to prod the wife into taking umbrage at what he labels government ineptitude and inaction, while the State Department representative is coolly efficient, and even dispassionate, in her attempt to treat the matter with professional detachment. It is her job to try to make the wife aware of the larger equation of which the taking of a hostage is only one element, but as the months inch by it becomes increasingly difficult to remain patient. The wife is finally goaded by unforeseen developments to speak out against government policy and, in so doing, triggers the tragic series of events that brings the play to its startling conclusion. In the end there are no winners, only losers, and the sense of futility and despair that comes when people of goodwill realize that logic, compassion and fairness have become meaningless when dealing with those who would commit such barbarous acts so willingly.

Two Rooms

A Walk in the Woods

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Books by Blessing, Lee