Lying Fallow and Permanent Things: Two Plays

These two 1990’s plays by Joe Doran offer intense dramatic entertainment.

Lying Fallow tells the tale of Jack Willow, an ex-convict whose plans to work a old family farm get upended when his deranged cousin Stu shows up. Out to settle old scores, Stu sets his sights not just on the family inheritance, but Jack’s pregnant wife Lainey.

Doran sends eerily familiar characters careening along melodramatic twists to an almost inexplicable climax--at which point, the audience is left wondering whether it was all a perverse joyride, an unsettling fable, or just maybe, a sobering meditation on an entire theatrical form.

In Permanent Things, when a long-estranged daughter convinces her movie icon father to work with a promising but unambitious young stage actor, the stage is set for a modern revenge tragedy. A script by a blackballed playwright serves as the catalyst in a test of wills, artistic pretensions, and moral conscience.

Throughout the escalating struggle, Joe Doran asks a powerful series of questions about the motivations of artists and the limits of their creations.

Joe Doran’s plays have been performed by theatre groups around the world. As an actor, director and producer, he worked with many regional theatre companies, and founded two of his own.