Adam Bock’s plays include Swimming in the Shallows, Five Flights, The Typographer’s Dream, Thursday, The Shaker Chair, The Thugs, The Drunken City and The Receptionist, with productions in the States, Canada and Britain. Five Flights won the Glickman Award, was nominated for the ATCA and Osborn Awards and moved to New York’s Rattlestick Theatre. Swimming won three BATCC Awards, a Clauder and was nominated for the Weissberger. In 2005, Swimming was produced by New York’s Second Stage. The sold-out production was called “a screwy little jewel” by The New York Times, named Top Ten by Time Out New York, featured on the cover of American Theatre magazine, nominated for a GLAAD Media Award and published in the Best Plays of 2005. Encore Theater’s production of Typographer was named Top Ten by The San Francisco Chronicle and remounted in Berkeley; The Shaker Chair was at the Humana Festival in 2005 and published by DPS; and The Audience, a musical Adam helped Jack Cummings III create, was nominated for three Drama Desk Awards. 3 Guys and a Brenda, a ten-minute play that started at The 24-Hour Plays, won the Heinemann Award and was produced at Humana. Bock is an artistic associate at Shotgun Players and Encore Theater, and a member of MCC’s Writers Coalition, and has received commissions from Playwrights Horizons, the Kitchen Theater, and Salt Lake Acting Company.
Bock won the 2006-2007 Obie Award for playwriting for The Thugs (produced by Soho Rep in NYC in fall 2006)
His newest play, The Receptionist, was workshopped at Perry-Mansfield and the O’Neill Conference in Summer 2006 and premiered at the Manhattan Thertre Club in October 2007 with Josh Charles, Robert Foxworth, Jayne Houdyshell, and Kendra Kassebaum, directed by Joe Mantello.
At the start of a typical day in the Northeast Office, Beverly [Jayne Houdyshell] deals effortlessly with ringing phones and her colleague's romantic troubles. Beverly also gossips on the line with friends, gives the amusing Lorraine (Kendra Kassebaum) advice, cleans her computer screen with the little stuffed bear in the corner and orders a cake for Mr. Raymond's (Robert Foxworth) impending birthday. She believes herself to be the nerve center of a company that, for all we initially know, could be the regional distributor of widgets. But the appearance of a charming rep from the Central Office (Josh Charles) disrupts the friendly routine. And as the true nature of the company's business becomes apparent, The Receptionist raises disquieting, provocative questions about the consequences of complicity with evil.
