William Inge

To Bobolink, for Her Spirit: A short play about autograph hunters lying in wait for celebrities outside a New York restaurant. People in the Wind: Midnight at a bus station in rural Kansas and a mixed bag of passengers - all victims of differing fates. A Social Event: A brief, but revealing, study of two young Hollywood hopefuls. The Boy in the Basement: A gripping play about a middle-aged man, still living with his parents, who suffers from a...

A three-act play, set in two adjoining backyards in a small Kansas town, about the emotional reactions elicited in the neighborhood widows, spinsters, and teenagers by the handsome but maladjusted stranger who attends their annual Labor Day picnic.

A play about an unwed middle-age mother, her new live-in younger boyfriend and her fresh-from-reform-school teenage son sank without much of a trace after its inaugural performances. But in the hands of director John Mossman and a splendid ensemble at the tiny Artistic Home, it's a revelation. This isn't a great play, but it's one that is so far removed from Inge's usual milieu of dusty prairie towns ("Picnic," "Bus Stop") and so startling in its...

During the dust and heat of a long Kansas summer, William Inge's A Loss of Roses is a tale set in a Depression both economic and emotional. Lila Green, a tent show actress who' traveling troupe has folded, finds refuge with old friends in a small town. Helen Baird, a respectable widowed nurse and former neighbor, looks on her with motherly affection, and son Kenny has fond memories of the "Aunt Lila"who used to babysit him. But Kenny is now a full-grown...

William Inge burst upon the theatrical scene with this story of marital frustration which erupts into violence.

"William Inge's famous story of marital frustration which erupts in violence. Doc and Lola had an indiscreet affair, she became pregnant and, compelled to marry her, he gave up his medical studies, forfeited his future and settled down to a life of quiet desperation with the simple, homey Lola, who lost the child but has remained Doc's steadfast if slatternly wife. Now a chiropractor and recovering alcoholic, Doc's sobriety is tested when Marie, a...

A brash young man meets the girl of his dreams and decides to make her his wife, but she has no interest in his proposal. When their bus is stalled by a blocked road in a bad storm, they must spend the night in a diner where their plight is revealed to all. At the same time, the owner of the diner and the bus driver at last find time to develop a friendship of their own; a middle-aged scholar comes to terms with himself; and a young girl who works...