About the Play:

Animal Farm is a full-length political satire adapted for the stage by Nelson Bond, from the classic allegorical novel by George Orwell. Led by three pigs, the disgruntled animals overthrow their human owner, take control of the farm and create a new society in which: "All Animals Are Equal." The Pigs are first to take charge, but as each of them vie for power, the society becomes corrupted and the animals are led into a dark and brutal existence, in which "Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others." Always worth rereading, the story in this staged dramatic reading is a delight to the ears as well.

Animal Farm is an ever-valid fable with a sting. Much has been written about the dangers of an authoritarian government, but it remained to the late George Orwell, farsighted British author of the brilliant and frightening 1984, to expose the Soviet Union experiment under Stalin for what it really was; an idealist's dream, converted by realists into a nightmare. In staged dramatic reading version of this classic allegorical masterpiece your audience will meet beasts whose prototypes have dominated news headlines for many fearful years. Opening on a note of joyous triumph for the animals on "Manor Farm" who have emancipated themselves from the cruel mastery of Farmer Jones, establishing a commune, renamed "Animal Farm," where the animals work for themselves, and all is well … until it isn't. The reading mounts inexorably to a climax of disillusionment in which the other animals discover themselves now subject to the rule of even more ruthless autocrats: the greedy, cunning pigs. Intermingling humour and drama, Animal Farm wrings the emotions of its listeners, leaving audiences shaken with the tale of a tragedy that happened in a mythical barnyard far away but could happen in our own back yard.

Anmal Farm premiered in 1961 at The Showtimers Studio Theatre in Roanoake, Virginia. It was revived worldwide in 1984, and has been a staple of community theatres, regional repertory houses, and high schools since then.

Cast: 2 women, 5 men

What people say:

"Animal Farm unfolds as an increasingly dark children's tale of talking animals who overthrow a farmer only to find their leader's beautiful dream of liberation and self-determination contorted... Adapted by Nelson Bond, the tale endures because it offers such a spare and incisive warning: Can power corrupt the once-hopeful as well as the craven? Absolutely." — The Denver Post

"Animal Farm is as meaningful in these days of a liberated Eastern Europe as it was nearly a half-century ago. There are also obvious parallels in Western Europe and even in today's--and yesterday's, and probably tomorrow's – North, Central and South America." — Los Angeles Times

"Animal Farm unfolds as an increasingly dark children's tale of talking animals who overthrow a farmer only to find their leader's beautiful dream of liberation and self-determination contorted... Adapted by Nelson Bond, the tale endures because it offers such a spare and incisive warning: Can power corrupt the once-hopeful as well as the craven? Absolutely." — The Denver Post

About the Playwright:

Nelson Slade Bond (1908-2006) was one of the most prolific and well-known American writers of fantasy and science fiction stories from the 1930s until the 1950s. The author of more than 250 short stories, as well as several novels and novellas, he also wrote extensively for radio and television. He also wrote an adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm as a two-act play.

George Orwell (1903-1950), whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair, won a scholarship to Eton then served in the Imperial Police in Burma from 1922-27, where his experiences of colonialism stayed with him for life. His first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), described his experiences in both cities of living on the poverty line. In The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) he wrote about the unemployed in the North of England, but before it was published he left for Spain and fought for the Republicans in the Civil War, as described in his Homage to Catalonia (1938). He had by then also written three realistic novels, but it was the political allegorical Animal Farm in 1945 that won him worldwide fame, which was redoubled with the publication in 1949, just before his death the following year, of his most famous novel, 1984.