"Cocaine is a play by Pendleton King. The following one-act play is reprinted from The Provincetown Plays. Ed. George Cram Cook & Frank Shay. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1921. It is believed to be in the public domain and may therefore be performed without royalties. But it's Pendleton King's Cocaine that's the intriguing dark horse, the kind of lesser-known, infrequently-staged classic that Savage Rose is known for producing. King was a playwright of great promise whose career was interrupted by the first World War. Savage Rose producing artistic director J. Barrett Cooper first discovered Cocaine in a used book store anthology. The dialogue is so alive and sounds like anything that would be written today, says Cooper. But what we've been able to find in it is a real grittiness. It's not a romantic take on cocaine addicts. King's own story is an American tragedy just begging to be produced. He was a totally secret rich guy slumming it down in the Village, says Cooper. He was very unassuming, very nice, well educated, and he wrote this incredible play. A young gambler and the jail's cook fall in love at first sight and make plans to run away together, but fate intervenes. One-act plays were frequently the warm-up for the main show, Cooper says. That was when you'd go to the theater and expect to spend three or four hours at a theater. They're an hour and twenty, an hour and a half. The new idea is get 'em in and get 'em out because that's all the audience can take. Jake, a Mississippi cotton gin owner, burns down his rival's mill, who retaliates by seducing Jake's emotionally fragile young wife. Addiction, obsession, revenge - it's a bit of a bleak bill, Cooper admits. But, he says, each play contains a certain amount of hope."@en . "Cocaine (play)"@en . "Cocaine is a play by Pendleton King. The following one-act play is reprinted from The Provincetown Plays. Ed. George Cram Cook & Frank Shay. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1921. It is believed to be in the public domain and may therefore be performed without royalties. But it's Pendleton King's Cocaine that's the intriguing dark horse, the kind of lesser-known, infrequently-staged classic that Savage Rose is known for producing. King was a playwright of great promise whose career was interrupted by the first World War. Savage Rose producing artistic director J. Barrett Cooper first discovered Cocaine in a used book store anthology. The dialogue is so alive and sounds like anything that would be written today, says Cooper. But what we've been able to find in it is a real grittiness. It'"@en . .