Being the personal chronicle of a life in American Theatre:
From the glory days of the Off-Broadway movement, to theatre's
present decline, and towards its uncertain future.
"Welcome to my Website.
Come on in and explore my Off-Broadway
productions and full play catalogue; my days as Artistic Director of
two important venues of play development; various bits and pieces;
articles and essays— and (after a teaching career spanning 40 years)
my insights into the art and craft of the writing of plays.”
FG
My first novel, Anton's Leap,
What Anton's Leap is about:
Part political thriller, part sex farce, playwright Frank Gagliano's first novel ANTON'S LEAP is narrated by free-associating, sex-obsessed ballet star, Anton Otchayanie (which in Russian means Despair). It is 1982 and Anton wants to defect from Soviet Russia. But to do so, he will have to survive a train collision in Prague, join a traveling troupe of erotic jugglers, fall in love, screw a lot, create ballet and Commedia dell' Arte scenarios, get sodomized with the nose of a Commedia dell' Arte mask, seek a super-strength serum, struggle to find an artistic persona, and develop compassion for other human beings. All this, while fleeing (in drag) from a Gay KGB agent and Anton's own psychopathic twin brother Vahktang who--in a Kafkaesque horror scene--confronts Anton in a Prague Fun House. Richard Wagner's testicles also play a role. For fans of picaresque flights of literary fancy like "Candide" or "Gulliver's Travels," and for devotees of unhinged surrealists like film director Federico Fellini, ANTON'S LEAP is a must-read tour-de-force.
Anton's Leap (back cover)
"I just finished reading Gagliano's delicious, delightful and magnificently- 
sexy novel, ANTON'S LEAP; I loved it! I am thinking now, that if somehow, against restrictions: biological, geographical, and perhaps, moral -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Susan Sontag, Madonna and The Smashing Pumpkins had managed to produce a child together, that child might well have written ANTON'S LEAP."
Joseph Graves -- Artistic Director, Beijing Institute of World Theatre and Film
Order ANTON'S LEAP now at
http://www.amazon.com
Be among the first to post your own review.
Now you can preview the FOREWORD, PROLOGUE and PART ONE