Phillie’s Trilogy
by Doug DeVita
Growing up gay in the “fabulous” 70s was no picnic for the precocious budding writer Phillie McDougal. Through nuns, priests, bullying classmates, parents – and years later the realization his best friend may not be the person he thought she was – he lived to tell the tales, with results no one bargained for. Including him.
- Cast Size: 3M 4W with doubling
- Running Time: 90+ minutes
- Royalty Rate $75 per performance
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About the Playwright
A member of The Dramatists Guild, Doug is a two-time O’Neill Semi-Finalist (Fable and Just A Rumor), Semi-Finalist for Barrington Stage Company’s Burman New Play Award, Normal Avenue’s New American Play Series, and Campfire Theatre Festival (Phillie’s Trilogy,) Semi-Finalist for B Street Theatre’s New Comedy Festival (Goddess Of The Huntand Upper Division), and Semi-Finalist for We Screenplay’s Diverse Voices Competition (The Fierce Urgency Of Now).
In addition, he has won Fresh Fruit Awards of Distinction for Outstanding Play (The Fierce Urgency Of Now) and Outstanding Production (Fierce… and Phillie’s Trilogy) as well as the Inaugural (and so far only) Scrap Mettle Arts Emerging Playwrights Competition (Phillie’s Trilogy.)
Doug is currently an advisory board member for All Out Arts, and formerly an Artistic Director for Westside Repertory Theater. His work has been seen in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Jersey, Connecticut, and London, and has been developed at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC (Mark Bly, Gary Garrison, Jacqueline Goldfinger, and Caleen Jennings), and at ESPA/Primary Stages in New York (Robert Askins, Rogelio Martinez, Winter Miller, and Michael Walkup). He has also studied with Karen Hartman, Lyle Kessler, Jeffrey Sweet, and Eric Webb.
Our memories can be manipulative things, and the stories we tell ourselves can be adjusted to make amends or carry hurts and pains for a very long time. This play is a deeply-felt work with vibrant characters who see their past and present at the same time; at times battling each other but also singing in harmony. This is an ambitious play that will touch you in ways you don’t expect but also resonate. Doug DeVita brings the scalpel and sharp focus on the characters to the point that it’s a breathtaking trip through the past and present in the lives of these friends and family, lovers and rivals, bringing out the past joys and pain in exquisite and sometimes excruciating detail. The growth of the characters through the years and the regressions to past hurts makes it all the more compelling to watch and hold them to your heart.
Exquisite. With Phillie McDougal, DeVita gifts the audience with one of the most uniquely layered queer & quirky characters ever devised. Unapologetic, defiant, vulnerable, volatile & antagonistic all rolled into one. And in fact, every single character in this play is captivating, the relationships between them genuinely complex and entwined. Phillie’s Trilogy is also cinematic in scope as DeVita nimbly moves backward and forward in time, expertly accentuating various tense moments with flashbacks & voiceovers. There’s plenty to ponder, but at the center of this play is an extraordinary love story between a gay man and his best girl friend.
The past is always with us, quite literally in this play where the past and present are seamlessly intertwined. But the past comes freighted with misperceptions and self-deceptions. As Phillie works through those, he unearths terrible betrayals by family and friends, and that knowledge changes his view of his whole life. An excellent look at how good intentions and selfish motives can do irreparable harm to our closest relationships. What were originally three separate plays have been transformed and integrated into one devastating whole.
Phillie’s Trilogy is three coming of age stories in one about a boy and the man he becomes. It perfectly captures how our friends and family resonate from childhood into our later lives. It’s a roller coaster of torment, forgiveness, disappointment, and surprising tenderness. Early on, it also deals frankly which childhood sexuality: what we long for before we understand longing and how we experiment before we understand our bodies. A lovely piece.
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