About the Play:

Book of Days has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

Book of Days is a full-length gasp-worthy murder mystery by Lanford Wilson. When murder roars through a small Missouri town, Ruth begins her own quest to find truth and honesty amid small town jealousies, religion, greed and lies. This tornado of a play propels you through its events like a page-turning mystery. In Book of Days, Lanford Wilson uses note perfect language to create characters that are remarkable both for their comic turns and for their enormous depth.

Book of Days concerns a murder in a small Missouri town and one quirky woman's mission to uncover the truth about it. Dublin, Missouri is dominated by three institutions: a cheese plant, a fundamentalist church, and a community theatre. The cheese factory is owned by Walt, a local tycoon who wants to keep the status quo and reap the profits from producing mediocre cheese for Kraft Foods. The plant manager, Len, has bigger plans. He wants to transform part of the output into fine cheeses for a more refined clientele. The play begins when a guest director, escaping Hollywood and on the run from the IRS, casts Len's wife, cheese plant bookkeeper Ruth, as Joan of Arc in a community theatre production of the George Bernard Shaw play St. Joan. When Walt dies mysteriously in a hunting accident and Len's dreams of turning the plant into a gourmet cheese factory are threatened, Ruth turns into Sherlock Holmes. Suspecting murder, Ruth launches a one woman campaign to see justice done. In doing so, she pits herself against the church and against the lascivious new owner of the cheese plant. Ruth, forced into heroism, gradually becomes the character she is playing onstage – crusading, single-minded, fearless Joan of Arc. Book of Days makes us re-examine how we perceive the people we thought we knew best, and the threat posed by the religious right.

Book of Days was originally commissioned and premiered in 1998 by the Purple Rose Theatre Company in Chelsea, Michigan. It was subsequently produced by Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and by Hartford Stage. The American Theatre Critics Association named it the winner of the ATCA New Play Award for 1998. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is a staple of community theatres, regional repertory houses, and high schools.

Cast: 5 female, 7 male

What people say:

"A significant addition to the Lanford Wilson canon … his best work since Fifth of July … An intriguing, prismatic and thoroughly engrossing depiction of contemporary small-town life with a murder mystery at its core … a splendid evening of theater…." — Variety

"…fascinating … a densely populated, unpredictable little world … [filled with] intriguing characters who touch each other's lives through an elaborate series of connections … Above all, there's the language … You could go to the theater night after night and never hear language so supple." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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.