The Trustus Collection - Paperback

The Trustus Collection: Six Plays by Jon Tuttle

This collection brings together six plays written by Jon Tuttle and performed at Columbia, South Carolina's Trustus Theatre over a 14-year period. The anthology traces the evolution of a playwright, a theater company, and a cultural movement in American regional theater.

Featured Plays

The collection spans from The Hammerstone, winner of the Trustus Playwright's Festival in 1994, which went on to be performed in 17 states across the country, to the 2018 production Boy About Ten. Each play offers insight into characters whose unconventional lives reflect the absurdity and value of human experience.

As Thorne Compton notes in his introduction, "In Jon Tuttle's world life is a confusing pile of colorful chips from a kaleidoscope that has long been smashed," and "the fact that life is absurd and usually ends badly does not make it any less valuable." These plays examine both the miracles and mundaneness of characters who defy normalcy.

About Jon Tuttle

Jon Tuttle is Professor of English, Director of University Honors, the Nellie Cooke Sparrow Writer-in-Residence, a J. Loren Mason Distinguished Professor, and an FMU Trustees Distinguished Scholar at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina.

His theatrical works have earned recognition throughout the American theater community. Beyond this collection, his plays include A Fish Story (Samuel French, Inc., 2008), Terminal Café (Dramatists Play Service, 1996), and one-act plays The White Problem (Playscripts Inc., 2006), Sonata for Armadillos (Playscripts Inc., 2002), and One Another (with Cindy Turner, Smith & Kraus, 2018).

Tuttle has received the South Carolina Theater Association's Founders Award, a Porter-Fleming Award, and a Pushcart Prize nomination for fiction. He has served on the boards of the South Carolina Academy of Authors and Florence Regional Arts Alliance.

For Theater Collections

This anthology serves as both a retrospective of one playwright's development and a document of contemporary American playwriting in the Southeast. The collection offers material for theater companies, drama students, and readers interested in regional theater movements and alternative theatrical voices.

Published by Muddy Ford Press LLC in March 2019, this paperback edition preserves 14 years of theatrical work from one of South Carolina's most recognized playwrights.