About the Play:

The Baby Dance has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Female/Female Scenes, Male/Male Scenes, and Three-Person Scenes.

The Baby Dance is a full-length drama by Jane Anderson. Facing opposite problems, Wanda is desperately poor in a trailer park and pregnant with a fifth child, and Rachel, though living the good life in Hollywood, longs to be a mother. A classified ad, backed by lawyers who arrange adoptions, brings the women and their husbands together to form an adoption agreement. The Baby Dance is a timely look at the social and economic issues surrounding private adoptions.

The Baby Dance is the story of two couples. Richard and Rachel, a trendy Hollywood couple has everything except a child. They locate Wanda and Al, a desperately poor couple in Louisiana who have agreed to let them adopt their soon-to-be-born fifth child. The dance these couples do during the weeks before the baby's birth is fraught with friction. Through a lawyer, the L.A. couple begin the process, arranging everything from a doctor for the delivery of the baby to the cost of an air-conditioner for the pregnant couple's trailer. Both parties do their best to make the arrangement work but the class differences create unbearable tensions. When it is discovered that the baby possibly suffered brain damage during the difficult birth, her husband backs away but Rachel wants the baby regardless. In the end, the childless couple leaves the baby's parents with another mouth to feed. Occasionally funny but never easy, The Baby Dance explores class, motherhood, prejudice, loss, and the ways our individual expectations bring us together and tear us apart. 

The Baby Dance premiered in 1990 at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. It was subsequently presented Off Broadway in 1991 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City and was a Finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded to plays written by women for the English-speaking theatre. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Lovely and touching." — The New Yorker

"Explosive. A stunner. It's funny as well as perceptive." — Los Angeles Times

"Compelling ... emotional power and nimble humor." — Wall Street Journal

"Riveting, heart gripping drama." — Newhouse Newspapers

"Absolutely gripping ... comic and stylish.... A play not to be missed." — New York Post

"...when deeds crash on the shoals of good intentions ... goodness breeds tragedy ... The Baby Dance dramatizes the dark side of the decent act." —Los Angeles Times

"Sometimes opposites attract; sometimes they come together just because each has something to gain. This is the general thrust behind playwright Jane Anderson's intelligent dramedy about the woes surrounding adoption." —Backstage

About the Playwright:

Jane Anderson is an American actress turned award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway and in theatres around the US, including Actors Theater of Louisville, Arena Stage, Williamstown, The McCarter Theater, Long Wharf, and The Pasadena Playhouse. She is an Emmy Award-, PEN Award- and Writers Guild Award-winning TV writer, who has also been nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series for her work on the television series Mad Men.