The world according to David Ives is a very add place, and his plays constitute a virtual stress test of the English language -- and of the audience's capacity for disorientation and delight. Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."

At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes "Sure Thing," "Words, Words, Words," "The Universal Language," "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," "The Philadelphia," "Long Ago and Far Away," "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue," "Seven Menus," "Mere Mortals," "English Made Simple," "A Singular Kinda Guy," "Speed-the-Play," "Ancient History," and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread."

Enigmatic actress Vanda Jordan appears unannounced for an audition with director Thomas Novachek. She's determined to land the leading role in his new production – despite seeming wrong for the part. The director is weary of auditioning a string of other actors, but agrees to see her, and is drawn quickly in to her act.

As Novachek reads the lines of the male character in his play - Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the Austrian author who gave his name to masochism - it becomes a play within a play. The audience is caught between what is 'real' and what is 'acted'.

Venus in Fur is an intoxicating dark comedy of desire, fantasy and the innate love of fur. An exploration of gender roles and sexuality, in which desire twists and turns in on itself, Venus in Fur is also a witty, unsettling look at the art of acting-onstage and off.

Venus in Fur has been produced all over America and all over the world, and was turned into a film by Roman Polanski that premiered in Cgender annes in 2013.