About the Play:

Blue Surge has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, Female/Male Scenes, and Male/Male Scenes.

Blue Surge is a full-length drama by Rebecca Gilman. He's a 38 year old cop. She's an 18 year old sex worker. He tries to help her. What could possibly go wrong? Set against challenging questions about the class struggle in America today, this moving love story between cops and hookers is a tale of expectations missed and overcome, a play about the narratives we all write for ourselves and how fortune and single moments can change our lives.

Blue Surge is a story about class clashes and the great American dream, as a small-town cop finds empathy for a young sex worker and offers to help her. Curt, an honourable small-town Midwestern cop, and his partner Doug lead a botched raid on a local massage parlour, and find themselves drawn to the two young sex workers they meet there – Sandy and Heather. While Doug pursues a relationship with Heather, Curt finds an unlikely kindred spirit in 18-year-old Sandy and attempts to save her from prostitution. His actions put everything he's worked for – his career, his friendships, and his engagement to upper-class artist Beth – at risk. But Curt sees a future with Sandy, an escape from his difficult past. Blue Surge offers a provocative take on class differences and gender dynamics with brutal honesty and surprising humour. Rebecca Gilman explores the small space between hope and hopelessness as her characters struggle to find an American Dream in which they can believe.

Blue Surge premiered in 2001 at the prestigious Goodman Theatre in Chicago before its 2002 New York debut off-Broadway at the Public Theater. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Rebecca Gilman tackles what may be her trickiest subject yet: the relationship between history and destiny ... she examines the role that class and background can play in shaping an individual's values and expectations ... [an] absorbing drama which reaffirms Gilman's flair for dialogue at once stringently intelligent and utterly natural!" — USA Today

"Ms. Gilman has the undeniable virtue of focusing with lucidity and evenhandedness on subjects that are more often sensationalized in the popular arts." — The New York Times

"Blue Surge never cheats and yet manages to surprise as it unfolds with increasing intensity. The climax is suasive, shatteringly beautiful, and absolutely right." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

Rebecca Gilman is an American playwright who received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Iowa in 1991. She is the first American playwright to win an Evening Standard Award for The Glory of Living (seen in the UK at the Royal Court Theatre), which also won the George Devine Award, was named one of Time magazine's Best Plays of the Decade, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been produced in the US at such venues as the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York, the Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Manhattan Class Company, in the UK at the Royal Court Theatre, as well as other theatres internationally. A native of Alabama, she was awarded the 2008 Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Most Distinguished Writer of the Year.