Variations on the Death of Trotsky is a short one-act comedy-drama written by David Ives for All in the Timing. The play fictionalizes the death of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky through a number of distinct variations, though all from the same, historically accurate cause: a wound to the head by an ice ax—referred to in the play as a "mountain-climber's ax", for comic effect, to distinguish it from an icepick.
While keeping with the tradition and style of Ives's plays of taking an odd conceit and playing it for laughs as the audience finds its feet before giving the big payoff, Variations is distinguished, along with Words, Words, Words and Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread in that, while it begins comically, it may end either comically or dramatically, depending on the production. It is unique in that, of all of his works, it calls the most for an unexpectedly tragic, sentimental ending. Arguably, it is also Ives' only piece centered around a single character. (While "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread" could be similarly considered, in fact the majority of that play is an ensemble piece.)
Read more about Variations On The Death Of Trotsky: Synopsis, Original Production
Famous quotes containing the words variations, death and/or trotsky:
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces—in nature, in society, in man himself.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)