Jumpers

Jumpers

    Author: Tom Stoppard

    First Performance: 1972, London

    Published: 1972; rev. 1973, 1986

    Genre: Com. in 2 acts and a coda

    Setting: Study, bedroom, and hall of George's apartment, c.1970

    Cast: 12m, 2f

Dorothy (Dotty) Moore, a beautiful prematurely retired musical-comedy actress, lives with her husband George, a Professor of Moral Philosophy. She gives a surreal party, at which George's po-faced Secretary strips, Dotty fails to sing about the moon, and a group of acrobats (‘Jumpers’) perform incompetently. The Jumpers form a pyramid, and one of their number is shot. The following morning, Dotty calls distractedly for help, while George prepares a paper on the existence of God. To illustrate Zeno's paradox, he fires off arrows and intends to use his tortoise and hare as an empirical test of the...

[The entire page is 371 words long]

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