A HUMORIST AND DEFIANT MESSENGER FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
“I started my professional writing work life at age 18 when I won $5 and a free copy in a college yearbook poetry writing contest. During college, I collected rejection slips from all of the best magazines in the country – Playboy, Esquire, The New Yorker. Nothing like rejection by the finest!
“After college, I parlayed my experience in rubber stamp making to technical jobs in newspaper and book publishing. My pursuit of being an advertising copywriter resulted in my being thrown out of the offices of the very finest creative directors in Dallas.
Then I got hired to write comedy ads for 7-Eleven which I did for many years, collecting International Awards for Radio comedy, CLIOs and ADDYs.
“In the 1980s, I set up my own creative services agency. I either got discovered or charged too way little because I was way too busy working for the Fortune Top 50 corporations and ad agencies. My collected advertising/p.r. works now take up 26 linear feet of shelf space in the Duke University Libraries David M. Rubenstein special collection on the history of advertising in the U.S.
You can hear funny old radio spots on his website www.th3simplequestions.com.
In the late '90s I managed progressive non-profits and started teaching self-development courses in maximum security prisons. I have been involved with restorative justice for almost twenty years.
I am an "Ageless Author" - and have won awards for writers age 65+.
Plays
Set in the year 2000, DANTE IN JIFFY LUBE dramatizes the true story of how a drug company combined Oxycodone with a newly patented drug, Contin; and drove it backed with massive incentives, promotional items and Congressional backing into the medical world, starting a decade of “pain relief” which turned into a street addiction nightmare.
DANTE IN JIFFY LUBE is the modern-day journey of a psychotic man (ERNIE) who imagines himself to be Dante Alegheri. ERNIE/DANTE makes his way through a hidden world most of us never experience - psychiatric hospitalization. ERNIE/DANTE travels over a modern, scientific moral terrain armed with poetry and helps us probe our assumptions about healing, sin, redemption, opioids, corporate greed, and poetry.
Between the poetic and the economic comes a third character whom the delusional ERNIE/DANTE sees as JOAN OF ARC, representing human kindness.
All this takes place in our contemporary society which has given up on genuine healing in favor of “Jiffy Lube” medicine where pharmacology and incentive-driven opioid sales are used to get patients functional, or at least “happy” and “back on the road of life.”
It is reported that some 70,000 people die each year from overdose of prescription opioids.
DANTE ALIGHIERI’s epic poem, THE DIVINE COMEDY
(written in the 1500s) is the journey of Dante, accompanied by the poet Virgil, through three realms Purgatory, The Inferno and Paradise. In this journey, Dante witnesses assorted horrors, punishments, and challenges before arriving in Paradise.
"Snoop Spoofs” are 10 - 15:00 minute comedic plays which may be produced separately or combined into an hour + evening of hilarity. The plays are written for two men and two women with doubling.
"Snoops" spoofed are: Stephanie Peach: “The Jersi Hotties”, Joe Friday – Dragnet: “The Beaver Cleaver Hanratty Truancy”, Hercule Poiriot: “Lunch With The Spider Woman”, Nick DeFalco, P.I.: “The Goddess In Green Satin”, Inspector Clouseau: “Relax and Wax”., Charlie's Angels: "Eldercare Bikini Wax Job", Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney: "Community Law Enforcement Belly Dance". The sketches may be woven together with black-out parodies of the Rockford Files telephone answering machine messages.
"Snoop Spoofs” are 10 - 15:00 minute comedic plays which may be produced separately or combined into an hour + evening of hilarity. The plays are written for two men and two women with doubling.
"Snoops" spoofed are: Stephanie Peach: “The Jersi Hotties”, Joe Friday – Dragnet: “The Beaver Cleaver Hanratty Truancy”, Hercule Poiriot: “Lunch With The Spider Woman”, Nick DeFalco, P.I.: “The Goddess In Green Satin”, Inspector Clouseau: “Relax and Wax”., Charlie's Angels: "Eldercare Bikini Wax Job", Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney: "Community Policing Belly Dance". The sketches may be woven together with black-out parodies of the Rockford Files telephone answering machine messages.
SYNOPSIS: A spoof of the popular Stephanie Plum series of 24 novels by Janet Evanovich and adapted into a 2012 film. Evanovich has said of Stephanie: "If Mickey Spillane wrote Archie and Veronica, Stephanie would be Betty."[2]
JERSI HOTTIES: STEPHANIE PEACH works in her cousin Vinnie’s Bail Bond company. Her partner, TALLI is a reformed “Ho” (whore) who is now the hottest clerk in New Jersey (Jersi). Together they are seeking to catch GREASY GARI who steals used cooking oil. Stephanie must fight off the advances of her boyfriend, DETECTIVE JOE MANICOTTI who believes that Stephanie cannot apprehend anyone by using Fabreeze rather than a Glock.
"Snoop Spoofs” are 10 - 15:00 minute comedic plays which may be produced separately or combined into an hour + evening of hilarity. The plays are written for two men and two women with doubling.
"Snoops" spoofed are: Stephanie Peach: “The Jersi Hotties”, Joe Friday – Dragnet: “The Beaver Cleaver Hanratty Truancy”, Hercule Poiriot: “Lunch With The Spider Woman”, Nick DeFalco, P.I.: “The Goddess In Green Satin”, Inspector Clouseau: “Relax and Wax”., Charlie's Angels: "Eldercare Bikini Wax Job", Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney: "Community Policing Belly Dance". The sketches may be woven together with black-out parodies of the Rockford Files telephone answering machine messages.
SYNOPSIS: JOE FRIDAY is now working for the Middle School Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Truancy Division. A MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL “informant” finks on BEAVER for cutting homeroom to go to Hanratty’s Gag and Novelty Shop. Friday investigates by going to the CLEAVER home and interviewing WARD and JUNE and discovers Beaver's secret as a "Clownvestite.":
"Snoop Spoofs” are 10 - 15:00 minute comedic plays which may be produced separately or combined into an hour + evening of hilarity. The plays are written for two men and two women with doubling.
"Snoops" spoofed are: Stephanie Peach: “The Jersi Hotties”, Joe Friday – Dragnet: “The Beaver Cleaver Hanratty Truancy”, Hercule Poiriot: “Lunch With The Spider Woman”, Nick DeFalco, P.I.: “The Goddess In Green Satin”, Inspector Clouseau: “Relax and Wax”., Charlie's Angels: "Eldercare Bikini Wax Job", Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney: "Community Policing Belly Dance". The sketches may be woven together with black-out parodies of the Rockford Files telephone answering machine messages.
SYNOPSIS: HERCULE POIROT, on assignment from the London, England Police Department; investigates Mrs. ARACHNIDA, a human-sized Spider-Woman from France who has woven her husband into a gigantic egg sac and is about to turn him into soup in order to feed the 50 hatchlings also growing in the sac. Surprisingly, Perot cannot intervene because “it’s “nature’s way”: many species eat one another, including politicians. He doubts that Spider-Woman would be charged because there is so little “really authentic French cooking in London.”
"Snoop Spoofs” are 10 - 15:00 minute comedic plays which may be produced separately or combined into an hour + evening of hilarity. The plays are written for two men and two women with doubling.
"Snoops" spoofed are: Stephanie Peach: “The Jersi Hotties”, Joe Friday – Dragnet: “The Beaver Cleaver Hanratty Truancy”, Hercule Poiriot: “Lunch With The Spider Woman”, Nick DeFalco, P.I.: “The Goddess In Green Satin”, Inspector Clouseau: “Relax and Wax”., Charlie's Angels: "Eldercare Bikini Wax Job", Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney: "Community Policing Belly Dance". The sketches may be woven together with black-out parodies of the Rockford Files telephone answering machine messages.
SYNOPSIS: NICK DeFALCO, Private Eye, is selected by DEMETER, a Goddess in a shimmering, emerald green satin dress, to find her daughter PERSEPHONEwho has been missing for 2,500 years after being abducted by HADES, the Dark Lord. Despite the fact that there are no photos of Persephone and as Nick says, “Where in the hell is Hades?”, he takes the case.
With his uncanny sense (luck?) about where to look for suspects, Nick goes to the local “Psychic Fair” to ask for advice. There he meets the Dark Lord, and discovers Persephone hasn’t visited her mom because she now has her MBA and has been busy setting up the Hades Take-Out Division which delivers “... nervousness, fear, free-floating anxiety, regret, greed and the little stuff that wakes you up at night.” In the end, Demeter plumps Nick’s checkbook nicely.
"Snoop Spoofs” are 10 - 15:00 minute comedic plays which may be produced separately or combined into an hour + evening of hilarity. The plays are written for two men and two women with doubling.
"Snoops" spoofed are: Stephanie Peach: “The Jersi Hotties”, Joe Friday – Dragnet: “The Beaver Cleaver Hanratty Truancy”, Hercule Poiriot: “Lunch With The Spider Woman”, Nick DeFalco, P.I.: “The Goddess In Green Satin”, Inspector Clouseau: “Relax and Wax”., Charlie's Angels: "Eldercare Bikini Wax Job", Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney: "Community Policing Belly Dance". The sketches may be woven together with black-out parodies of the Rockford Files telephone answering machine messages.
SYNOPSIS: INSPECTOR COLUSEAU, is going to go after a very rich jewel thief and his beautiful wife. In order to prepare to enter the world of the uber-wealthy, Clouseau has heard that he needs to become “one of the beautiful people.” To look more like a fashion model or a bodybuilder than the 50-year+ guy he is, he has decided to go to a new tanning/waxing parlor in town, “RELAX AND WAX”; not realizing it is also a marijuana dispensary. Through a mistaken set of events, Clouseau becomes stoned – and waxed!
"Snoop Spoofs” are 10 - 15:00 minute comedic plays which may be produced separately or combined into an hour + evening of hilarity. The plays are written for two men and two women with doubling.
"Snoops" spoofed are: Stephanie Peach: “The Jersi Hotties”, Joe Friday – Dragnet: “The Beaver Cleaver Hanratty Truancy”, Hercule Poiriot: “Lunch With The Spider Woman”, Nick DeFalco, P.I.: “The Goddess In Green Satin”, Inspector Clouseau: “Relax and Wax”., Charlie's Angels: "Eldercare Bikini Wax Job", Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney: "Community Policing Belly Dance". The sketches may be woven together with black-out parodies of the Rockford Files telephone answering machine messages.
SYNOPSIS: CHARLIE’S ANGELS are now in their 60’s and how have SABRINA, KELLY and JILL - the active, vivacious, intelligent ANGELS who served the unseen CHARLIE aged? And, what the heck happened to Charlie anyway?
The ROQUEFORT TRANSITIONS are hilarious parodies of “Rockford Files”–style answering machine vignette which may be used to weave together any series of plays.
The Roquefort Transitions were Snoop Spoofs, a “Mini-Festival” 10:00 - 15:00 plays spoofing well-known detectives.
Written for performance by 2 women and 2 men with doubling.
SHORTER PLAYS - 10:00 - 15:00 Min
By the award-Winning Essayist, Playwright, Prison Volunteer, Waldorf Dad, Quaker,
1998 – Present: Teaching in Maximum Security Prisons self-development programs: Introduction To Biography (Phases and Stages") and Six Subsidiary Exercises.
3RD PLACE WINNER 2020 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS & NEW ORLEANS LITERARY ONE-ACT PLAYWRITING CONTEST - A prisoner in a maximum-security prison, dressed in orange jumpsuit and shackled, escourted by a guard carrying a shotgun, reads the 10-minute report he has prepared for a public speaking class.
WHY DADDY PLAYS THE BLUES is about a guy named "DADDY", a successful, middle-aged white guy taking fingerstyle blues guitar lessons from HOWARD, a wheelchair-bound 30-something African American man. Daddy discovers that he has major life lessons to learn from this teacher. Daddy's PRIDE fueled by the karma of business, money, and economics, has put Howard in the wheelchair.
The finger-style blues song they are working with is "C.C.Rider" by Robert Johnson Jr.
"This story is inspired by actual events. In certain cases incidents, characters and timelines have been changed or invented for dramatic purposes. Certain characters may be composites, or entirely fictitious."
Synopsis: The play dramatizes the events of President’s Day Weekend 1991 at the start of “Operation Desert Storm”, the first war in Iraq.
President and Mrs. George H.W. Bush plan to attend Sunday services at First Congregational Church in Kennebunkport, Maine – a beautiful, simple country church selected because it is an excellent “photo op” for the President. More than 200 international media representatives are expected.
In attendance on Sunday are peace activists, JOHN and CONNIE SCHMIDT. During the service, JOHN is jeered by parishioners for daring to attempt to pray for the people of Iraq and eventually thrown out of the church by a SECRET SERVICE agent creating another “photo op” for the anti-war activists.
SYNOPSIS: Mr. Johnson is dying. Therapists from the Care for the Dying Society tend him at his apartment. His daughter, Joan, arrives for a final visit before he passes at the moment in which the care-giving shift is changing. Mr. Johnson suffers from Aspberger’s syndrome, a disease that has made him painfully anxious and angry about life. But, according to Mrs. Johnson, as he is approaching death, he has become “different.” Joan hopes against hope for even the smallest crumb of intimacy from this cold, distant, angry man. Has he changed?
“Snoop Spoofs” are 10-15:00 minute comedic plays which may be produced separately or combined into an hour + evening of hilarity. Snoops spoofed are: Stephanie Peach: “The Jersi Hotties”, Joe Friday – Dragnet: “The Beaver Cleaver Hanratty Skip”, Hercule Poiriot: “Lunch With The Spider Woman”, Nick DeFalco, P.I.: “The Goddess In Green Satin”, Inspector Clouseau: “Relax and Wax”, and Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney: “Community Policing Belly Dance”. The sketches are woven together with black-out parodies of the “Rockford Files”-style telephone answering machine messages. The plays are written for two men and two women with doubling.
SYNOPSIS: MAYBERRY law enforcement is like ALL law enforcement, only smaller. This dramatizes a conversation between our Quick Thinking-DEPUTY BARNEY-SELF and our “slower-thinking”* SHERIFF ANDY SELF on the topic of policing, immigrants, suspected terrorists and belly dancing. AUNT BEA is being taught belly dancing by FAWZIA a recent Mayberry-ite at a community program.
*Characterizations based on “THINKING FAST THINKING SLOW” by Daniel Kahneman, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, NY, 2011. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for Economics
10-20:00 COMEDY
SYNOPSIS: A very creative but dictatorial Ad Agency President has assigned his team of writers to create a series of national television commercials for the agency’s largest and most prestigious client. The future of the Agency is riding on these commercials.. Unbeknownst to the “boss”, all did not go smoothly. They got stuck. So they took themselves on a “retreat” to a resort Near Mexico called “Rancho Notorious” where they have spent a week and are now returning with the fruits of their labor.
Successes
JEAN W. YEAGER NAMED 3RD PLACE WINNER
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS & NEW ORLEANS
2022 NATIONAL LITERARY FESTIVAL
ONE-ACT PLAY WRITING COMPETITION
Jean W. Yeager, a Rutland, VT playwright, and award-winning writer was awarded 3rd Place in the national 2022 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival National One-Act Competition for his play, “PRISONER #101067 PUBLIC SPEAKING REPORT – “THE LIFE AND TIMES OF TUPAC SHAKUR” AND EXCERPTS FROM THE PRINCE BY NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI”
SYNOPSIS: set in a Maximum-Security Prison. A prisoner in orange jumpsuit enters shackled and guarded by a man with a shotgun. MIKE CANNADY, Special Activities Director, welcomes the audience and introduces the speaker, a man whose crime is so heinous he remains anonymity. PRISONER #101067 leads the audience through a book report he has researched and written for a public speaking class in order to learn skills to improve his appearances in court and before the Parole Board.
PRISONER #101067 recounts the tumultuous life and times of TUPAC SHAKUR (1971-1996) amid a history of Black revolution, police brutality, institutional racism, and international genocide. The PRISONER contrasts these acts with quotations from the philosopher and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli’s (1469-1527) treatise on amoral power politics “The Prince” written to instruct “Princes” on how to wield power to their advantage. The play ends with Machiavelli’s conclusion – which is a warning for Princes of all times – that the one thing that can overcome any “Princely” power system is art; because art is of the People and not a Prince and has “resurrection power.”
The play was inspired by prisoners in maximum security prisons in Detroit and Jackson, MI whom Yeager taught in self-improvement courses (including public speaking) from 1997-2006 (the time of Shakur’s killing).
Yeager was Administrative Director of the Anthroposophical Society (1996-2006) where he assisted Fred Janney in launching the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach program (2000.)
In 2006, Yeager moved to Vermont where, prior to COVID, continued to volunteer and teach similar programs at the Marble Valley Correctional Facility (MVRCF) in Rutland, VT. He and his wife, Marietta, are active participants in a community-based Restorative Justice program.
Yeager is a 1970 graduate of Colorado State University (CSU) with a B.A. in English. He has won fiction, non-fiction, playwrighting, and screenplay writing awards. His plays have been produced at theaters across the U.S. He and his wife are practicing Quakers.
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RECENT CONTESTS: •
2020 Winner Ageless Authors Short Story Contest
2019 Finalist Las Vegas Int'l Screenplay Contest
2019 Winner Ageless Authors Essay Contest
2018 Produced "Clothes Line" in Dorset Theater (VT) One-Act Festival
2017 Winner - Dead Mule Southern Writers Memoir Category
2016 Winner - Ageless Authors National Essay Contest, Dallas, TX - "Kite Justice"
2016 Finalist Tennessee Williams National One Act Playwriting Contest, New Orleans, LA "How Santa Claus Came To Zone Whiskey Alpha Romeo (W.A.R.)
2012 Finalist, Nor’Eastern Play Writing Contest, “The Substance of Love” – One Act
2011 Nor’Eastern Play Writing Contest, Finalist, “Dante In Jiffy Lube” – One Act
2009 “Clothes Line”; “Best of the Rest”, Actor’s Theatre, Santa Cruz, CA; Liana Moraru, Director. (Staged reading.)
2008 “Prisoner #101067 Public Speaking Report: The Life And Times of Tupac Shakur And Excerpts From The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli”, Staged reading by Resilience of the Spirit: Human Rights Festival (July) 2008. 6th @ Penn Theatre, San Diego, CA.
1970 - 1980s CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS • In 2012, the Duke University Rubenstein Library Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections accepted Yeager's collection of original scripts for corporate presentations, executive speeches and shows as well as radio and television commercials, print ads, sales collateral and other materials documenting the career of Jean W. Yeager as part of Duke's Hartman Center
In 2021, my short fiction piece “Old Pirates Of The Heart” won the National Ageless Authors Competition. In 2019, my screenplay “How Santa Claus Came To Simpson’s Bar” was a Finalist in the Las Vegas Int’l. Screenplay Competition. In 2018, my essay, “The Kite Of Our Genius – Sail On” was the winner of the Ageless Authors national essay competition. My one-act play, “Christmas In the Whisky-Alpha-Romeo (W.A.R.) Zone” was a finalist in the Tennessee Williams One-Act Play Writing contest.
My wife Marietta and I are very active the Rutland, VT community restorative justice work. I also conduct adult education courses classes in Rudolf Steiner’s Six Subsidiary Exercise and an Introduction to Biography class in my local jail.
My writing web site is: www.th3simplequestions.com .
A profile in our local newspaper;
“Jean Yeager is a deep-thinking, dry-humored, spiritually-minded, and fabulously unique writer. His subject choices are often unusual and his metaphors always creative. He makes connections between things many would never think of (for example, I recall in one writing session he wrote about a ‘gravel pit wound”’.”
“But best of all, he’s an incredibly likable man….”
“Yeager, born and raised in Texas, began writing as a teenager. He eventually got into advertising for major corporations, including McDonald's, 7-Eleven, and Coca-Cola, for which he won awards. He even wrote a film for then-President Ronald Reagan.”
“In his mid-forties, he left the advertising business and became a consultant of socially progressive nonprofits. He and his wife moved to Rutland in 2008 after retiring from his job as Executive Director of a nonprofit in Ann Arbor, Michigan.”
RUTLAND HERALD, March 2016 by Joanna Tebbs-Young