Uncle Jacques’ Symphony

Uncle Jacques’ Symphony is not so much a play but a bonfire ignited by a playwright intent on burning his characters into the minds of his audience. The effect of the evening remains for days like smoldering ashes. The play begins with the introduction of Jacques Hoffman, “a hip cat with fast hands on the music scene in 1950’s Chicago”. A jazz drummer that had to wrench himself away from club dates and late nights in order to enter the responsible world of the daylight hours where men support their families from 9:00am to 5:00pm. The change tore the music out of Jacques’ soul. Not for long. He built a symphony out of the people in his life.

Uncle Jacques’ Symphony is a verbal jazz concert played in the keys of language and the colors of eloquence. He spent the rest of his life listening to the sounds of humanity and orchestrating the lessons of life into an opus of success, failure, pain, pleasure, exultation, degradation, power, the pursuit of passion and the desperation to stay alive. The people who passed through Jacques Hoffman’s life make a sound like no other human beings on earth.

Written and performed by Dominic Hoffman, this is a play about seven of these very diverse human beings who all shared the friendship of Jacques Hoffman.

Uncle Jacques’ Symphony will be the first production housed at the newly renovated and completely refurbished SOHO PLAYHOUSE.