Mouth of Shadows

	Fiction Non-Fiction Poetry MEB Authors Bookstores Press Events Open City Distribution Booksense Excerpts Contacts	Mouth of Shadows by Charles Borkhuis Two Plays: Sunspots & Hamlet's Ghosts Perform Hamlet ISBN 1-881471-32-2 $12.00 US \| $15.95 CAN Find the book on Amazon > In these two plays by inveterate New York playwright and poet Charles Borkhuis the quotidian is stretched to the breaking point by incandescent language, black humor, and the fallout from lucid dreams. Hamlet’s Ghosts Perform Hamlet features a playwright haunted by a beehive of Hamlets and Ophelias attempting to turn the tables on his new version of Shakespeare’s classic. In the flim noir sendup, Sunspots, the specter of a photographer’s dead wife leads him on a harrowing journey through hilariously nightmarish scenes of the New York underworld. To stay alive, our theater needs Borkhuis’s plays—a rare combination of language that bites the mind and a smart theatricality that spins into the guts of what makes plays “work” on stage. Richard Foreman, Ontological Hysteric Theater Even in hard-boiled mode, Borkhuis writes drama like poetry; his monologues flood through his characters, turning every line into a meditation on possibility. Rain Taxi Charles’s poetry is pure theater and his theater is pure poetry. “There are too many authors in this body...It’s an insurrection of the parts...Each eyebrow would like nothing better than to rip the other off my forehead.” Hamlet’s Ghosts Perform Hamlet is an intensely subtle and subtly intense insight into the metaphorical mind. Lee Breuer, Mabou Mines Charles Borkhuis is one of our most interesting experimental playwrights. Mac Wellman

Mouth of Shadows by Charles Borkhuis
Two Plays: Sunspots & Hamlet's Ghosts Perform Hamlet
ISBN 1-881471-32-2 $12.00 US | $15.95 CAN

Find the book on Amazon >

In these two plays by inveterate New York playwright and poet
Charles Borkhuis the quotidian is stretched to the breaking point
by incandescent language, black humor, and the fallout from
lucid dreams. Hamlet’s Ghosts Perform Hamlet features a playwright
haunted by a beehive of Hamlets and Ophelias attempting to turn
the tables on his new version of Shakespeare’s classic. In the flim
noir sendup, Sunspots, the specter of a photographer’s dead wife
leads him on a harrowing journey through hilariously nightmarish
scenes of the New York underworld.

To stay alive, our theater needs Borkhuis’s plays—a rare combination
of language that bites the mind and a smart theatricality that spins into
the guts of what makes plays “work” on stage.     Richard Foreman, Ontological Hysteric Theater

Even in hard-boiled mode, Borkhuis writes drama like poetry; his monologues
flood through his characters, turning every line into a meditation on possibility.
Rain Taxi

Charles’s poetry is pure theater and his theater is pure poetry. “There are too
many authors in this body...It’s an insurrection of the parts...Each eyebrow would
like nothing better than to rip the other off my forehead.” Hamlet’s Ghosts
Perform Hamlet is an intensely subtle and subtly intense insight into the
metaphorical mind.    Lee Breuer, Mabou Mines

Charles Borkhuis is one of our most interesting experimental playwrights.
Mac Wellman