Alphabetical Order

About the Book

Alphabetical Order: A Melofarce in Two Acts is a contra-PC look at the simultaneous farce and melodrama that is higher education in America. It uses the extremes of the classroom absurdities from the 1970s on to dramatize the highly comic standoff among teachers, students, and administrators at all times and in all places that always ends in the same old shootout, never mind polite appearances.

Professor Dog, President Staffuk and the campus cops, and the know-it-all, mind-of-their-own, not-interested-in-education students, led by the voluptuous, mini-skirted, make-love-not-war Eve Alpha and the always-politically-motivated reactionary Bob Beta, will remind you of the anarchy that always lies in wait in every classroom and the way that it is always smashed. And thereby projects an image of the larger world. Times change, the forms of anarchy change, but the eventual suppression of it is always "alphabetical" in the sudden application of arbitrary power when things get out of hand. Alpha, sit here! Beta, sit there! Gamma, sit here! But you won't be able to sit still as this laugh-out-loud school daze drama plays itself out.

About the Author

R. F. Dietrich, Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida, is the author of two novels, The Final Solution (ISBN 0-595-13273-1), a tale of messianic ambition that foresaw the devilish events of 9/11/2001, and Earth Angel (ISBN 1-4033-5793-5), a wryly narrated nostalgia piece about the laughable but lovable 1950s. In his first play, Alphabetical Order, he entertains with an absurdist vision of higher education in America.