1001

by Jason Grote

4m, 2f to play multiple roles / Dramatic Comedy The cuckolded King Shahriyar is marrying a new bride every night and beheading her the next morning. As unrest spreads in the Sultanate, his vizier's daughter Scheherezade hatches a plan: she will offer herself as a bride and seduce the king with stories that leave him hanging on every word. She weaves such tales as "Sindbad the Sailor" and "Alaeddin and His Magic Lamp" with stories of Borges, Flaubert, and Alan and Dahna -- a Jewish man and an Ar

Genres: Plays

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2009

Reviews

[Martin Denton · Rating 3 out of 5]

You are not who you think you are. You are an invention of men from lands as far away as the ones to which your adventures have taken you.

So says Jorge Luis Borges to Sindbad the Seaman in one of the numerous vignettes contained within Jason Grote's ambitious onion of a play, 1001. The pairing of these two figures--one an actual (though deceased) writer, the other a fictional character from The Book of The Thousand Nights and One Night--is more fanciful than most that occur in this play, but this is the central, archetypal one, I think; and this quote, which leads into a fascinating and wise explanation (delivered by Borges) of the ways that stories spiral back on themselves through cultures and epochs, expresses the main idea of 1001.

Grote's play begins, nevertheless, with what feels like a fairly linear re-telling of the story of Scheherazade. The great Persian King Shahriyar, betrayed by his adulterous wife, vows to wed a different virgin bride every night of his life, whom he will then kill the following morning to prevent her from yielding to temptation and sin. Eventually, all the available women of the kingdom have been murdered save the daughters of the Wazir, Scheherazade and Dunyazade. Scheherazade conceives a crafty plan to keep the King from killing her: on her wedding night, she tells Shahriyar a spellbinding story, but stops short of its ending. He wants to know how the tale comes out, but she refuses to complete it and instead begins another. Eventually the king is too tired to consummate his vows or hear more stories, and Scheherazade lives until the next day...and the next story.

The legendary tales spin around and through one another, and suddenly skip forward into the future, where another set of tales begins. The contemporary segment of 1001, which proves to be the dominant one, involves a Jewish student named Alan and his relationship with a Palestinian woman named Dahna. They find themselves wrapped into events that they can't seem to control: her parents want her to marry a Muslim man named Asser, leading her to question her feelings for Alan; and then one day they find themselves caught in a massive terrorist attack that destroys much of Manhattan.

It's clever and even ingenious, the way that Grote's characters and plots mirror and comment on each other. With its jokey anachronisms and audaciously apocalyptic details, 1001 feels like it's going to explain something important about the tide of history, but it never quite does. It is, instead, a play about stories and their potency.

[Dylan Zucati · Rating 3 out of 5]

Makes an argument for empathy towards the middle east while simultaneously trying to present an entertaining show. Misses the mark entertaining throughout, but there are a lot more plays that do a lot less. Give it a read if you’re new to post modern theater and you need a really good theme to get behind, otherwise maybe give it a pass unless you’re bored.

[Lizzie]

Finally used an ancient Drama Book Store gift that Shannon gave me!