Dog Assassin: The Musical

By Stephen Schrum

In a Prologue, we see Osiris attacked by Set, and chopped into pieces. Isis, Osiris' wife, searches for him, while Set and his followers unleash chaos on the world. Meanwhile, Bob, a young supermarket bagger, moonlights as a “dog assassin,” to rid the world of “alarm clock dogs” and other canines that disturb their suburban neighbors. All is well until he meets Amber; some of her comments cause him to question why he doesn’t feel powerful as cannibals do when they devour the blood of their enemies. Worried, he applies to a local mafia Don for a job as a human assassin, and is sent off with two hitman. He is told only to observe, but the trip ends with quite unexpected results, becomes a life-changing event for Bob, and banishing the chaos brought about by Set. In spite of the title, Dog Assassin: The Musical is a tale of spiritual redemption and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Schrum
• Release date: May 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301528592

Stephen Schrum

Stephen A. Schrum, PhD, is a theatre director, performance poet, playwright, novelist, graphic novelist, virtual worlds theatre director, and Steampunk maker. Notable past RL (real life) productions include: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (set in 1995) and Macbeth (performed in a cyberpunk style); Moliere’s The Miser (done in period costume) and The Misanthrope (set in the era of Disco); Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis (utilizing both the Japanese dance-drama form Butoh and hallucinatory soundscapes that Schrum created). With the research area of “The Perception of Presence in Virtual Performance,” he has directed virtual productions of The Bacchae and Prometheus Bound in Second Life (SL). He began teaching with technology in 1993, and since then has been writing and presenting on the topic, including editing the book, Theatre in Cyberspace: Issues of Teaching, Acting and Directing (2000). More recently he has turned his attention to Transhumanism, with a side-detour into Steampunk. Stephen is also interested digital filmmaking; check out his work on his youtube channel.

Book preview

DOG ASSASSIN: THE MUSICAL

A Post-Progressive Rock Musical

And a Parabolic Allegory by

Stephen A. Schrum

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Stephen A. Schrum

Previous versions:

Copyright 1998, 2008, 2011, 2012

Discover other titles by Stephen A. Schrum at:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/musofyr

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Table of Contents

Cast List

Performance Rights Note

Author’s Note

First Production

ACT I

Prologue

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Scene 9

Scene 10

ACT II

Scene 11

Scene 12

Scene 13

Scene 14

Scene 15

Scene 16

Scene 17

Scene 18

Scene 19

Scene 20

Scene 21

Scene 22

About the Author

DOG ASSASSIN

A Post-Progressive Rock Musical and Parabolic Allegory

©1998, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013 Stephen A. Schrum

Dramatis Personae

BOB, The Dog Assassin

TED, his friend, a fast food worker

AMBER, A young woman BOB falls for

HEATHER, a young woman TED falls for

TAMMY, a waitress

TOM, A hitman

JIM, a hitman

DON PALANCIA, a local Mafia don

3 NEIGHBORS of barking dogs

JOHN, a victim of the hitmen

CARL, TED’s co-worker

ELDERLY WOMAN

MAN, another employee of DON PALANCIA

COOK at the Bar/Restaurant

BAR PATRONS

TATTOOIST

SPIRIT GUIDE DOG

BOB’S FATHER

BOB’S MOTHER

BOB’S SISTER

The EGYPTIANS

OSIRIS

ISIS

HIGH PRIEST

SET

SET’S FOLLOWERS

EGYPTIAN ANIMAL GODS

Time: The 1990s? The Present?

Place: Northeast PA (and ancient Egypt)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: While this play could be done very realistically as a film, I conceived it as a stage play, presented with cinematic staging on a unit set, with puppets for the dogs.

The large cast should also not present a problem, since the Egyptians should double the modern characters.

New note for the 2012/2013 version: The play premiered as a musical, and this is the musical version.

Amber’s Monologue, found in Scene 10, was published in One on One: The Best Women's Monologues for the 21st Century, edited by Joyce Henry, Bob Shuman, and Rebecca Dunn Jaroff (NY: Applause Books, 2007).

Performance Rights

The musical presented in this ebook may not be staged without first contacting the author (Stephen A. Schrum) and the composer (Jeremy dePrisco).

The non-musical version (also available on Smashwords) may be staged with a royalty payment of $25 per performance. Please examine that text to determine the arrangements to be made.

Printed programs or screen credits should include the author’s/composer’s full names with credit as the author/composer of the work. Also appended should be the sentence: Produced with permission of the author and composer.

Those interested only in the play (non-musical) version of the play may examine that version in a separate ebook version.

Author’s Note

(Director’s Notes to the original production)

When my wife and I were living in Northeast PA, a dog compound sat across from our townhouse. Inside the wire and wooden cage lived two very large and very noisy dogs who would bark at anything. They would bark at a passing car, a person walking by, or a nearby squirrel. One day, as I was walking down the road to get the mail and they were barking at me again, I thought, Wow, if I could just hire a hitman to get rid of those dogs.…

And so the idea of Dog Assassin was born. When written, however, it seemed a bit short for a play. And so, some time later, I had another thought: Why not turn it into a musical? I then wrote song lyrics for it, and recruited Jeremy dePrisco (with whom I had worked on two musicals previously—adaptations of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis and Tauris (1998) and Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1999). While those were both adapted pieces (though Iphigenia had original lyrics that I wrote), this show would be an entirely new work.

During the creation process of Dog Assassin, I had become enamored (again) of progressive rock, and was thinking of Arjen Lucassen’s Ayreon and Star One, Steven Wilson’s Porcupine Tree and Clive Nolan‘s Caamora as musical reference points. (I disagree with Stephen Sondheim who says that rock music cannot provide sufficient emotional range for musical theatre.) Through email, in-person meetings and a summer retreat (those poor people at that State College hotel…), Jeremy and I hammered out the songs. Of course, besides the prog, we included a Broadway tap dance number and a rap, to give the work a wider musical palette.

I am sure there are those who will fixate on the title and be