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An Overview of George Milton Savage Jr. (Jorj) and His Plays
I am a second generation playwright, and my influences go way back to radio days and vaudeville. I've experimented with various forms and venues, but the best way to describe my writing is that it celebrates the lives of folk heroes.
I approach every play differently, usually beginning with a real life
situation, basing my characters on composites of real people and creating a
dilemma, a catch 22 situation, a moral quandary where often the right thing in
human terms is
to break rules. I become each character as I write and then let that
character figure out their own survival strategy. It's not my solution
it's theirs. And sometimes other people who know my character better than
I do tell me what they should do. I'm always having readings and
critiques and I listen to how actors play a scene and to their aside comments.
I like to say: "I plagiarize from life."
There are five historical plays set in the 19th century and one set in the 18th century. There are three cowboy plays (one is a trilogy of one acts) my first play and my personal favorite of all my plays. It's called The Days of Wakefield's Bar and has a cast of 13, ten of them men (9 cowboys).
There's one play set in New York City, one set on Mercer Island, two contemporary plays set in the Sierra foothills near Sacramento. One play chronicles the aftermath of a safe sex party, several plays are about homecare, one is set in a phone soliciting boiler room, one is set in a gas station.
The plays have worked well with non-traditional casting, there have been parts written for Asian and African American actors and Native Americans. Chief Seattle is a character in one play, Doc and the Widow (about Doc Maynard).
There are now 24 full length Savage plays, three of them musicals, and dozen or so successful one acts, an unpublished novel and three screenplays. Most of the plays have had some kind of production and then have been revised afterwards. If not produced they have all had numerous readings.
Biography
I was born in Seattle in 1936 the son of a playwright, my father, with whom I collaborated until his death in 1976. We relocated to Los Angeles in the 1950s when my father got a faculty position at UCLA. I was surrounded by theater people during my formative years.
I attended the University of Redlands in California, where I was attracted to the general field of social work and the social gospel of the Methodist Church. My favorite classes were always sociology because I was learning about people, especially people in difficult situations. Later, in my career as a social worker, I gathered much of the material I used in developing the characters and plots of my plays.
In Los Angeles during the 60s. My father and I developed what became known as a Savage Play: a blend of folk comedy, farce and realism. It often took place over a weekend and usually had a large cast and often a single set.
In the 1970s my family relocated to the gold rush country where I used the local legends for a series of folk tales about the gold rush era.
In the late 1980s I returned to Seattle where I became active in several theater groups. I am currently affiliated with Seattle Playwright's Studio (SPS) and Writer's and Actors Reading and Performing (WARP).
Thoughts about playwriting
My friend Jim Missey has said my plays define the last half of the 20th century. Each one is set in a specific time reflecting the events of that year. Not Around Gordie is set at the time when John Kennedy was running against Richard Nixon in 1960. The central character in The Garbage Hustler was in World War II. I strive for the three unities: unity of time, unity of place, and unity of action in a play. Sometimes the unity gets away from me because of the way the story takes over.
When my wife and I were living in Manhattan Island's Lower East Side, in a 5th floor walk up rent control apartment for $70/mo., in 1962, my college roommate, Robert Thayer, who had gone on to get his PhD in psychology at Rochester, came by to visit. He was in town for a conference. I walked him to the subway late at night and we were alone except for an old musician who was down on his luck. Bob introduced himself to the man, who was asking for a dollar to get a bed for the night. Then Bob introduced the guy to me mentioning that I was a playwright. The man scoffed, and offered this observation: "A playwright's just another name for a ne'er-do-well." It's as good a description as any. I'm a playwright and maybe the down and out musician was right.
The next year when one of my cowboy Plays
(Farley's Return) had been optione
d
for an off-Broadway musical one of the friends of the couple writing the music
and lyrics read some of my plays and had this to say: "You write about the
kind of people I spend my whole life trying to avoid and I certainly don't want
to go to the theater and see them." He also said he liked the Greek
playwrights because they were dead. It was very sad. His friends had
such hopes for the musical but I just couldn't accept their New York take on my
cowboys.
In the mid-1970's, when I was living in Colfax in California's Gold Rush Country, I guessed the weight of heifer at the Nevada Country Fair. I made more money from guessing the weight of that heifer than I ever have from playwriting. I knew the weight of my daughter's pony and so I had something to base my guess on.
My wife of 48 years, Jean , died April 4th 2007 from Parkinson's. She stuck with me and once said she probably wouldn't have married me if I weren't a playwright. So after years of not having a break through play I lamented one night: "I guess I'll never be a household word." To this she replied: "You are a household word...in three households."
Here's the full length plays.
In Order Written as best I can remember.
The Plays
THE DAYS OF WAKEFIELD'S BAR
THE GARBAGE HUSTLER
NOT AROUND GORDIE
BEAR MCCREADY
THE BEREAVEMENT OF BABS BURSETTE
ABOVE THE TIMBERLINE (Musical)
BEADWORK IS ON THE AGENDA
MULES OF AUBURN */LYNCHING AT THE FORKS (GO TOGETHER FOR FULL LENGTH)
THE LEGEND OF BODIE ROSE (Musical)
500 PONIES AND BOTH MY WIVES
THE REBELLIOUS HORSE *
DOC AND THE WIDOW
OLD FLAME IN THE BOILER ROOM
SEAGULL ON THE MAST
AN OCCASIONAL IMPALA
XERXES'S REWARD
WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE (Musical)
UNDEFINED RELATIONSHIP
KUBLA CAN'T
THE SAFE SEX PARTY
RIDING THE LETTUCE
CHRISTMAS BROTHERHOOD
DESIRE UNDER THE PINES
THE WOMAN WHO WAS LIKE STEVE MCQUEEN
That's 24. There's probably one I forgot.
There's one acts and short plays. I probably have 50 but here is a
list of the ones that were very successful:
SABLE COLORED EYEBROWS
SITTING DUCKS
THE TOP TWO *
DOPER'S LAMENTS
JOHNNY THE SHARK *
MRS. ALLENDUFF'S PARTY *
THE HEMSTEAD *
FAREWELL TO A SOLDIER *
I also have a novel: DEAD COW VALLEY *
(UNPUBLISHED)
And an original screenplay: SLADE RULED
SUPREME *
And screenplays for THE DAYS OF
WAKEFIELD'S BAR *and
BODIE ROSE. *
* Available in hardcopy only
