Ambrose Bierce, The Last Stand Of — Robert Foster

Legendary writer, warrior, poet and cynic, Ambrose Bierce, in the last days of 1913, rode off to Mexico to join forces with the last remaining maverick rebel he respected, Pancho Villa. He never returned. This original play imagines "Bitter Bierce's" final night on Earth, holed up in a Mexican brothel, awaiting his own demise at the hands of a federalé lynching party he assumes is due. His minister cousin arrives instead, with one of Bierce's old journalistic rivals in tow, to convince him to return with them across the border. Bierce refuses to be "rescued," prefering a defiant fate in a foreign land to an lingering old age at home. The result is a feiry confrontation between a determined man of the Cloth and the author of The Devil's Dictionary - alive with actual Bierce quotes and passages from his writings. Which of the Bierces will relent before death comes knocking? Not long after its premiere in 2001, AMBROSE BIERCE, THE LAST STAND OF (originally titled simply "Ambrose Bierce") was accepted into the Official Bierce Bibliography by the Ambrose Bierce Appreciation Society.