About the Play:

Balm in Gilead has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

Balm in Gilead is a full-length comedic drama by Lanford Wilson. Welcome to Frank's Cafe, an all-night coffee shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side peopled by a makeshift community of dealers, junkies, hustlers, prostitutes, dreamers and vice. The economic and social stresses placed on the human condition take center stage in Balm in Gilead, a critically-acclaimed play that illuminates the bleak and terrifying world of young exiles and outcasts who refuse to lose.

Balm in Gilead is set in an all-night coffee shop on New York's upper Broadway, where the riff-raff, the losers, the petty thieves, the desperate of the big city come together. The character's lives are mired in sleaze, addictions, crime and violence, but the diner offers them a comforting escape, and a sense of community. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson based Balm in Gilead on the all-night Manhattan coffee shop he lived above in the 1960s. He regularly took his pen and notebook downstairs, soaking up the desperate, confessional exchanges between junkies, pushers, hookers, and hustlers. He turned them into a play focusing on Joe, a smalltime hustler in over his head, and newcomer and would-be hooker Darlene, two young people who would seem to have the strength and the need to transcend the turmoil and ugliness of the life in which they found themselves – but are, instead, crushed by it. But their loss is quickly absorbed in the maelstrom, as the others go on desperately seeking the joy and release and purpose in life which will, most certainly, continue to escape them. One of the milestones of the dynamic Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement, Balm in Gilead offers insight into addiction, not only to drugs but also to hope and love. It also forces its audience to ponder the choices we make in life, and how we might have done things differently if given a second chance.

Balm in Gilead premiered in 1965 at Off-Off Broadway's famed La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa E.T.C.). The first full-length play ever produced Off-Off Broadway, it played to sold-out houses for a season. Since then the play's reputation was solidified in 1984 when it was revived by Circle Rep and Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a riveting production directed by John Malkovich and starring Gary Sinise and Laurie Metcalf. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and this large cast play is a staple of college and community theatre productions because it gives everyone something meaningful to do.

Cast: 8 female, 16 male

What people say:

"Lanford Wilson is the rare dramatist, witty and humorous, who sees all his characters from the inside … Balm in Gilead is life itself trapped in a play." — New York Magazine

"When Lanford Wilson wrote Balm in Gilead, his first full-length play, he was still in his 20's and the Off Off Broadway theater movement was young. The play – a naturalistic visit with 29 low-life denizens of an all-night Upper Broadway coffee shop – caused a sensation at the Cafe La Mama in 1965; witnesses say that the doors had to be locked to keep out excess theatergoers." — New York Times

"Wilson's play is highly theatrical ... Balm in Gilead is a poignant and haunting production." — Backstage

About the Playwright:

Lanford Wilson (1937-2011) was one of the most distinguished American playwrights of the late 20th century. He was instrumental in drawing attention to Off-Off Broadway, where his first works were staged in the mid-1960s. He was also among the first playwrights to move from that milieu to renown on wider stages, ascending to Off Broadway, and then to Broadway, within a decade of his arrival in New York. His work has also long been a staple of regional theaters throughout the United States. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.