The Optimist: Recent Episodes
Roy Schreiber
University and College Professors have a reputation for being eccentric. This is a 5 episode play that agrees wholeheartedly with that description. One character believes he is the modern day version of King Henry VIII. Another character believes that logic and reason are answer to all problems, political and personal. Maybe eccentric is too mild a word.
Gary and Vivian want history to repeat itself, in a good way. Ralph wants everyone to act logically and sensibly. Just because they are highly educated professors, are they any more likely to get their wishes than the beauty pageant contestants who wish for world peace?
Ralph discovers that putting a modern day Henry VIII together with a modern day Ann Boleyn takes a path that he thinks has disaster written all over it.
It turns out a faculty committee that Ralph, Al and Eleanor thought would never do anything, now must do something quickly. Ralph is stuck with most of the work. It involves convincing Gary, a history professor who thinks he is the modern day version of Henry VIII, to give a public lecture. It also involves convincing Vivian, an English lit. professor who thinks she is the modern day version of Queen Ann Boleyn, to come to Gary's lecture. This time, perhaps, he was a bit too successful.
Despite all kinds of obstacles, it looks like Ralph, Al and Eleanor's plan to unionize the faculty will fall into place. Seeing may be believing, but looks can be deceiving.
Ralph, Al and Eleanor, professors at a small rural college, want to unionize the faculty. Ralph, the philosophy professor, has come up a logical, sensible plan. What is it they say about the best laid plans?