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CJ Hopkins

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C. J. Hopkins (born 1961) is an American playwright, novelist, and political satirist. Among his works are the plays Horse Country, screwmachine/eyecandy and The Extremists.

C.J. Hopkins
Hopkins in 2018.
Born
Christopher Hopkins

1961 (age 62–63)[1]
Miami, Florida, U.S.[citation needed]
NationalityAmerican
Other namesChristopher Hopkins
Occupations
Years active1990s–present
Websiteconsentfactory.org

Career

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Early works

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Hopkins was a 1994 Drama League of New York Developing Artist Fellow and a 1995 Resident Artist/Jerome Foundation Fellow at Mabou Mines/Suite.[2]

Horse Country

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His 1992 play, Horse Country, had its UK premiere at the 2002 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Lyn Gardner in The Guardian wrote: "Hopkins's two-hander brings the spirit of Godot to America's bars and puts the bourbon in Beckett. It feels like a serious piece of theatre rather than fringe fluff."[3] It won a Scotsman Fringe First for New Writing and the 2002 Scotsman Best of the Fringe Firsts Award,[4][5] and later won the 2004 Best of The Adelaide Fringe Award. Following its London premiere at Riverside Studios,[6] Horse Country toured the UK, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

Later works

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Hopkins' play screwmachine/eyecandy was copyrighted in 1994, but updated when it was performed a decade later.[14] A production ran during the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Assembly Rooms when The Scotsman described it as a "dark and twisted comedy" about the American game show in which "the excesses of American culture are held up to the light, roundly lampooned and shown to be the poisonous, culturally carcinogenic threats that they really are."[15] It received a Scotsman Fringe First Award for New Writing.[16] The US production was presented at 59E59 Theaters[17] in New York in 2006. Mark Blankenship wrote in his review for Variety: "Although he apes the themes of everything from 1984 to Series 7, a film about a murderous reality show, Hopkins delivers his dogmatism with heavy-handed arrogance."[14] A production was presented at the PushPush theater in Decatur, Georgia in 2008,[18] and it was performed at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2017.[19]

Also in 2006, Hopkins' commission by the Free University of Berlin to write and direct a site-specific work, The Insurgency, was staged in German at the university's Philological Library.[20]

His 2009 play The Extremists, commissioned by 7 Stages and directed by Walter D. Asmus, premiered in Berlin and Atlanta in 2010.[21]

Hopkins' debut novel, Zone 23, was published in 2017. It "describes a post-catastrophic, ‘genetically-corrected’ corporatist society in which dissent has been pathologised".[22] Dactyl Review described it as "a witty, nasty, erudite, Pynchonesque narrative, full of fleshed-out sleazy characters and a hyper-detailed alternative world".[23]

Hopkins moved to Germany in 2004. In 2022, he tweeted pictures of the cover of his essay-collection The Rise of the New Normal Reich (2022). The cover included a swastika, and he was charged according to German law regarding "propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization." Reporter James Kirchick commented that "One can call his method of argument likening anti-COVID policies to Nazism misguided, intellectually lazy, or tasteless—I personally find it to be all three—but endorsing "the aims" of National Socialism it is not."[24]

Bibliography

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Plays

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  • Horse Country, Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 0413774074 (2004)
  • screwmachine/eyecandy, Broadway Play Publishing Inc., ISBN 0881453382 (2007)
  • The Extremists, Broadway Play Publishing Inc., ISBN 0881454419 (2010)
  • The Insurgency, Bordercrossing Berlin, Verlagshaus J. Frank (2006)
  • cunnilinguistics
  • How To Entertain the Rich
  • The Installation
  • A Place Like This[25]

Essays

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  • Trumpocalypse: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. I (2016-2017), Consent Factory Publishing (self-published), 2019 ISBN 3982146402
  • The War on Populism: Consent Factory Essays Vol. II (2018-2019), Consent Factory Publishing (self-published), 2020, ISBN 9783982146416
  • The rise of the new normal Reich: Consent Factory essays. Vol. III (2020-2021), Consent Factory Publishing (self-published), 2022, ISBN 9783982146423

Novels

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References

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  1. ^ "The Minneapolis Putsch". consentfactory.org. Consent Factory, Inc. June 1, 2020. I was born in the segregated American South, with the segregated schools, and all the rest of it. I don't remember it — I was born in 1961 — but I do remember the years right after it.
  2. ^ "Program History/Artist Alumni". Mabou Mines. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  3. ^ Gardner, Lyn (20 August 2002). "Horse Country". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  4. ^ "The Scottish Playground | The Village Voice". The Village Voice. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  5. ^ Sumi, Glenn (27 March 2003). "Horse country". NOW Magazine. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  6. ^ "Edinburgh Horse Country Rides In for London Double". WhatsOnStage.com. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  7. ^ "PAST SHOWS - HORSE COUNTRY by CJ Hopkins 2002 (USA)". www.theatretoursinternational.com. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  8. ^ "Was that a seal I saw you with last night?". The Globe and Mail. 18 April 2003. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  9. ^ "Harbourfront Centre - World Stage 2012 | History of World Stage". www.harbourfrontcentre.com. Harbourfront Centre. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  10. ^ "Fringe Vault". fringevault.com.au.
  11. ^ "ATG Events - Reviews". theatreguide.tripod.com.
  12. ^ "Horse Country :: Arts Projects Australia". www.artsprojects.com.au.
  13. ^ Vries, Mark de; Dost, Lennard; Visschedijk, Rik; Piël, Wideke; Brink, Jan Auke (August 29, 2004). "Dagelijks verslag Noorderzon festival - Noorderzon verblindt". 8weekly.nl.
  14. ^ a b Blankenship, Mark (April 16, 2005). "screwmachine/eyecandy". Variety. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
  15. ^ "Screwmachine/Eyecandy". The Scotsman. August 8, 2005. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
  16. ^ Adam, Karla (August 29, 2005). "Top Prizes at Edinburgh Fringe". The New York Times.
  17. ^ "screwmachine/eyecandy | Theater | reviews, guides, things to do, film". Time Out New York.
  18. ^ Holman, Curt (December 10, 2008). "Theater Review - screwmachine/eyecandy at PushPush Theater". Creative Loafing. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  19. ^ Janiak, Lily (September 12, 2017). "A case for the Fringe Festival as central". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  20. ^ "Bibliothek als Bühne". www.fu-berlin.de. Free University of Berlin. September 21, 2006.
  21. ^ Holman, Curt. "Theater Review - The Extremists disarms weapons of mass distraction". Creative Loafing. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  22. ^ a b Miller, Daniel (2021-05-22). "It's up to us to resist the insanity of the 'new normal'". The Conservative Woman. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  23. ^ Alexander, V. N. (14 April 2024). "Zone 23 by C. J. Hopkins". Dactyl Review. Retrieved 21 April 2024.
  24. ^ Kirchick, James (3 January 2024). "What Happens Where Free Speech Is Unprotected". The Atlantic. Retrieved 31 January 2024.
  25. ^ "OOB's Theatorium Gets Out of A Place Like This, June 17". Playbill. 2000. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
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