About the Play:

Ascension Day has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Female Scenes.

Ascension Day is a one-act drama by Timothy Mason. Innocent and not-so-innocent choices made in youth can alter the course of a lifetime. This theme is sensitively explored as nine adolescents struggle for independence, personal identity, love, and the promise of the future in this one-act play, set in a Wisconsin Bible camp in the spring of 1947.

Ascension Day is a coming-of-age story about the transition into being adults after having lived through World War II. On the banks of a beautiful lake, nine teenagers pursue the normal church-camp activities: learning lifesaving techniques, enduring "nature tip" lectures and delivering dreaded spiritual "testimonials." But the moon is full, hormones are young and raging, and the cries of the loons carry a message of menace and loss. This single week is seen entirely through the eyes of the nine adolescents: the adults who determine, and in some ways damage, the lives of these youngsters, are never seen, but their threatening presence is always felt. Above these nine children hovers the rumour of a phenomenon not heard of until the late 1940s: alien visitors in crafts that were for the first time being called "flying saucers." Beneath them, the depths of the lake itself hold an Indian legend of love and bloody death. The focus of the play falls on two sisters, Faith and Charity, as they move unconsciously and inadvertently from a relationship of affection and trust toward a rift which seems likely to be permanent. The image of their granite-like father is forever before them, but they respond in different ways. Charity, the younger sister, seeks the approval and acceptance, so far missing from her life, through sex. Faith presents herself to the world as not caring for approval, but beneath her facade is the desperate fear that she herself is destined to turn to stone, just like her father. Faith's attempt to break free from her own rigidity ends in a disaster of the heart. Charity's bid for love is, unfortunately, somewhat more successful: It's clear by the end of the play that her disaster will last a lifetime.

Ascension Day was commissioned and first presented in 1990 by the Young Conservatory at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and been performed in high school, fringe, and college theatre productions.

Cast: 5 female, 4 male

About the Playwright:

Timothy Mason (1950-2023) spent most of his life working in theatre, first as an actor in his native Minneapolis and then as a playwright. He wrote the book and lyrics for the Broadway musical version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. His plays have been produced in New York by Circle Repertory, by the Actors Theatre of Louisville, South Coast Rep, Seattle Rep, Victory Gardens, Portland Stage, the Jungle Theatre and the Guthrie Theatre Lab. He won the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, the W. Alton Jones Foundation Award, the Berilla Kerr Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Award and the National Society of Arts and Letters Award.