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Broken Glass
Broken Glass
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Author: Arthur Miller Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 88 Pub. Date: 1994 ISBN-10: 082221413X ISBN-13: 9780822214137 Cast Size: 3 female, 3 male
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About
the Play:
Broken Glass has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes.
Broken Glass is a full-length drama by Arthur Miller.
It is set in 1938 New York when Sylvia Gellburg suddenly becomes
partially paralyzed from the waist down, after reading about the
Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass") events in Nazi
Germany in the newspaper. Her doctor, Harry Hyman, believes Sylvia’s
paralysis is psychosomatic and begins treatment, going deep into the
family secrets in order to cure her. An Arthur Miller masterpiece,
the production of Broken Glass at the Booth Theatre marked his
landmark 50th anniversary since his debut on Broadway in 1944.
Broken Glass is the story of a Jewish couple who considers
their lives and their pasts in 1938 Brooklyn, as storm clouds gather
in Nazi Germany. Sylvia Gellberg has suddenly, mysteriously, become
paralyzed from the waist down. Her husband Phillip takes her to see
the popular and attractive Dr Harry Hyman, whose 'talking cure' has
unexpected consequences. Dr. Hyman assures Phillip that physically,
there is nothing wrong with his wife and that she is sane, but
advises the only way to discover the cause of her paralysis is to
probe into her psyche. At this point, the author begins to peel away
all the layers of the characters' lives in this stunning, deeply
effective exploration of what it means to be American and Jewish in
1938. In his attempts to uncover the truth about Sylvia's paralysis,
Dr. Hyman, via conversations with Phillip, Sylvia, and her sister,
Harriet, discovers that the Gellberg's marriage was built on
resentment and that over the years has become loveless. While
Sylvia's affliction leaves her terrified, it exposes Phillip's
deepest emotions. He is obsessed with getting ahead, in a real estate
company where he is the only Jew. He hates himself, and he loathes
being Jewish. His self-hatred has always made him cold, and at times
even cruel, yet, Sylvia's condition has magnified his feelings
leaving him out of control with her, with Dr. Hyman and even with his
employers. Dr. Hyman's obsessive determination to cure Sylvia leads
him to discover that her paralysis occurred because of a traumatic
reaction to news of Kristallnacht. In a single night, the Nazis
destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and businesses, smashing windows
and burning synagogues. Sylvia is obviously overwhelmed by a
newspaper report on the infamous "Night of Broken Glass"
and an accompanying photograph of two old men forced to scrub German
sidewalks with toothbrushes. Haunted by these images, she becomes ill
and is unable to move. She feels something must be done to stop the
Nazis while most Americans believe the Germans won't allow them to
get out of hand. But what can she do when she can't even change her
own life? The atrocities in Germany, her husband's denial of his
Jewishness and her own realization that she threw her life away have
overcome her. Suddenly, she no longer simply feels helpless, she has
truly become helpless. Finally, with everyone's feelings laid bare,
the play comes to its heart-wrenching, electrifying conclusion, as
Phillip has a heart attack and begs Sylvia's forgiveness as he dies.
Broken Glass had its world premiere in 1994 at the Long
Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before transferring to
Broadway at the Booth Theatre. The British premiere was in 1994 at
the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre, winning the 1995 Laurence Olivier Award. A revival of Broken
Glass was staged in 2014 at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, London,
before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End.
The play has
become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and
workshops and has been performed in regional, high school,
college, and community theatre productions.
Cast: 3 female, 3 male
What people say:
"In a metier where people burn
out fast, Arthur Miller is still remarkable for the acuity and scope
of his moral vision. Miller's voice, which remains as strong and
unrelenting as a prophet's, distinguishes Broken Glass
and gives it a poignance so rare these days that it's almost
new-fashioned." — New York Times
"Playwrights tend to burn out
young, so the fact that Arthur Miller, seventy-eight, opened a new
drama on Broadway fifty years after his debut, is noteworthy. Even
better, the play is good—complex, mysterious, full of arresting
incident, grippingly played." — Time Magazine
"Broken Glass is
a brave, bighearted attempt by one of the pathfinders of postwar
drama to look at the tangle of evasions and hostilities by which the
soul contrives to hide its emptiness from itself." — The
New Yorker
"His strongest play for many
years, a gripping and at times powerfully affecting drama. As almost
always in his work, it balances private lives with public
morality...It is also an amazingly full-blooded piece, bursting with
pain and passion." — Daily Telegraph
About the Playwright:
Arthur
Miller (1915-2005) is considered one of the great American
playwrights. During the Depression, finances were scarce and he paid
for his college tuition by working as a shipping clerk in a New York
factory. He later wrote his first plays in college. With a career
that spanned over 50 years, he wrote more than thirty plays that
transformed American Theatre and proved to be both the conscience and
redemption of the times. His probing dramas received many awards in
his lifetime, including two Emmy awards and three Tony Awards for his
plays, a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Pulitzer Prize
for Drama in 1949, for Death of a Salesman.
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Arthur Miller, edited by Tony Kushner
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