Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread is a one-act play by David Ives, published as part of his 1994 All In The Timing collection.
[1] It was next performed as part of six short plays, collectively titled All in the Timing Off-Broadway at Primary Stages in 1993, and revived in 2013.
The latter lampoon, whose content is pretty much summed up in the title, gives Ives a chance to use a few banal pieces of dialogue to imitate the composer’s minimalist arpeggios..."[3] The short play imitates composer Philip Glass's minimalist style; that is to say that comparatively few words and ideas are repeated many times throughout the work.
The play opens and closes completely normally—"Philip Glass" enters a bakery, where in passing he encounters an old love of his accompanied by a friend.
[4] Between the two ends of this scene, in a long section marked by the ringing of a bell (a recurring device in Ives' plays), come rhythmic reorderings of the words used in the opening and closing.
Philip Glass... may be distinguished from most of Ives' other works in that its ending may be played either comedically or dramatically, depending on the production.