All scenes are shown with maximum use of lighting and video/slide effects and minimum use of set pieces and furniture

The Mayor’s Office
Bailey’s Books, an African-American bookstore across the street from the FOX Theatre

A hallway in City Hall
A private dining room in the Lakeview Club
The African American Museum front steps
The shore of Lake Merritt
City Council Chambers

Both our Oakland productions used slides of Oakland on a white curtain between scenes, to help entertain the audience while we made quick changes. (We also liked showing some of the beautiful places in Oakland, which has such an undeserved reputation as “all ghetto all the time.”) We would be happy to provide a DVD of those slides along with the rest of the materials, but if a company preferred not to use them, that would be fine, too.

Set in present-day Oakland, CASINO! purports to show Ace Trumps, casino developer,

and Mayor JB conniving to turn the Oakland FOX art deco theatre into an Indian casino.

A group of citizens, including Penelope Higgenbothem, preservationist, and Allegro

Moderato, children’s choir director, join City Council Member Nancy Tenacity in trying to stop it. Working for Nancy is the beautiful young Lupe Guzman, who proceeds to fall in love with a young fellow, Sam San Miguel, who is working for the gambling concern, and who falls madly back. Another important character is Jack Az, the City Hall letch whom everyone loves to hate.

Although the show was written in the early 2000s, the issue of gambling and its effects on America and on native tribes is far from out of date. I tried to present these issues in a light way, but I definitely wanted the audiences to think about them later. To me, gambling is like alcohol or marijuana: it can be a harmless relaxation, but you have to be aware of what you are doing and what your particular body, brain, and bank account can handle. It is also the kind of business that attracts unscrupulous investors and organized crime, so bringing it in thinking it is going to be the answer to your city’s financial woes is fabulously naïve—but done time and again. When I wrote this our mayor was talking about bringing a casino into Oakland, which is how I got the idea.

I’m not one of those playwrights who will write anything in any way that sells. All my plays have issues underneath. I think that is what playwrights are supposed to do. My exemplar was George Bernard Shaw, who allows his characters to opine on serious issues, but laces humor unrelentingly through his work. Also, by the way, he created a number of strong female characters, some so strong they were scandalous in his day.