About the Play:

Children of a Lesser God has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.

Children of a Lesser God is a full-length drama by Mark Medoff. A speech therapist who works at a school for the deaf attempts to teach the school's deaf cleaning woman to speak and read lips. As their relationship heats up, so does their need for control, igniting a thrilling exploration of passion, intimacy, and connection.

Children of a Lesser God tells the story of an unconventional teacher at a school for the deaf and the remarkable woman he meets there. After three years in the Peace Corps, James, a young speech therapist, joins the faculty of a school for the deaf, where he is to teach lip-reading. He meets Sarah, a school dropout, totally deaf from birth, and estranged both from the world of hearing and from those who would compromise to enter that world. Fluent in sign language, James tries, with little success, to help Sarah, but gradually the two fall in love and marry. At first their relationship is a happy and glowing one, as the gulf of silence between them seems to be bridged by their desire to understand each other's needs and feelings, but discord soon develops as Sarah becomes militant for the rights of the deaf and rejects any hint that she is being patronized and pitied. In the end the chasm between the worlds of sound and silence seems almost too great to cross … but love and compassion hold the hope of reconciliation, and a deeper, fuller understanding of differences that, in the final essence, can unite as well as divide.

Children of a Lesser God had a successful pre-Broadway engagement in 1980 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, premiered on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre, caused a sensation among audiences and critics alike, and won both the Tony Award and the Olivier Award, as well as the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Drama Desk Award as best play of the season. It has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, middle school, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Children of a Lesser God, in short and in sum, is the season's unexpected find, a play unlike any other and immensely likable in its self-assertion." — The New York Times

"Children of a Lesser God is an extraordinary play—illuminating, consistently interesting and moving." — Variety

"In any season this play would be a major event, a play of great importance, absorbing and interesting, full of love, understanding and passion." — New York Post

"…an authentic work of art." — The New Yorker

About the Playwright:

Mark Medoff (1940-2019) was an American playwright, screenwriter, film and theatre director, actor, and professor. He wrote 30 plays and wrote, produced or directed 19 movies. He found his greatest success with his play Children of a Lesser God, which received both the Tony Award and the Olivier Award, as well as Outer Critics and Drama Desk awards. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the film script of Children of a Lesser God and a Cable ACE award for his HBO premiere movie Apology. He received OBIE, Outer Critics and Drama Desk awards for When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?. He was Dramatist in Residence and Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts at New Mexico State University, where he served on the English and Theatre Arts faculties for twenty-seven years.