Dick Zigun pens book on ‘weird’ Coney Island plays

The unofficial mayor of Coney Island is coming out with a “wild” new book.

Dick Zigun, who co-founded nonprofit organization Coney Island USA in 1980 and served as the nonprofit’s artistic director, will release a book about the People’s Playground called “Coney Island Crackpots! Six Weird American Plays.”

“‘Coney Island Crackpots’ is the first step in my new artistic life after 42 years running Coney Island USA,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle. “Playwriting is not really a new career for me, rather a refocus on the writing I’ve done but never shared most of my career. This first collection of six weird Coney Island plays had to come first. I know my Coney Carny history, and I’ve seen how people behave here and heard how they talk.”

The book features six plays written by Zigun, along with a collection of color photographs from original productions at Coney Island USA.

“This provocative collection examines distinctly American obsessions through the vibrant history and unique culture of Coney Island,” said the book’s publishing company, Outside Talker Press. “These aren’t polite theater — they’re Al Capone getting his scar, Bettie Page on Coney’s beach, blood-soaked ride inspectors, and Maxim Gorky losing his mind in Dreamland.”

One of the plays featured in the book is “The Education of Al Capone as if Told by Jimmy Durante.”

“This production represents Zigun’s most explicit use of the ‘Coney Island Mythology,’” wrote Zigun’s publisher Jim Moore. “The play is based on the historical reality that Al Capone, Clara Bow and Jimmy Durante all frequented or worked in Coney Island during the early 20th century. Zigun took these facts and constructed a ‘what if’ scenario set at the Harvard Inn, a real-life saloon and gangster hangout.”

Another one, “Bloody Brains in a Jukebox,” is described as the most ambitious stage production ever mounted by Coney Island USA.

“The plot involves a quartet of doctors who resemble mid-century icons Sidney Poitier, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Coogan and Jayne Mansfield,” wrote Moore. “These characters interact with a talking, flying, brain-eating Wurlitzer Model 1100 jukebox. The production was designed to make abstract ideas like cosmology accessible via music and parody.”

The book will be released on May 15. Preorders began March 1.