About the Play:

Cobb has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues.

Cobb is a full-length drama by Lee Blessing. Detroit Tigers center fielder Ty Cobb is widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time; he's also roundly remembered as the most despised player of his generation – if not ever. Cobb is an exploration of humanity that goes beyond baseball and a single man, into the nature of successful people in general and the influences of their upbringing on the personalities they eventually become.

Cobb examines the character of controversial baseball legend Ty Cobb at three different stages (and nicknames) of his life: The Peach, aged nineteen, at the beginning of his long career with the Detroit Tigers; Ty, a shrewd investor in his early forties, at the end of his playing days; and Mr Cobb, an elderly man hoping to secure a positive legacy, at the point of death from cancer. The play floats freely in time, moving back and forth among the Cobbs as they contend with each other, and the audience, over whom Ty Cobb really was – everything from his unforgettable baseball career to the anger and violence he'd rather forget. But there's someone who won't let him forget: Oscar Charleston, dubbed the "Black Cobb" by the white press, a black baseball player who had all the same talents as Cobb but who never played against him due to segregation of leagues. Ty tries to avoid Charleston just as he always avoided playing exhibition games against him or any other black players. As Cobb fights both popular opinion, and himself, to justify his life, Charleston puts things into perspective for Cobb – Cobb thinks that his legacy is forgotten, but he was still the first player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, contrary to Charleston who was not inducted until 40 years later, long after he had died. The play showcases the complicated intersection of baseball, fame, and racial tension. Ultimately we come to know Cobb in his full complexity – as a sports hero of the highest order, fulfilling one of America's most cherished dreams, and as an example of some of its greatest failures.

Cobb premiered in 1989 at Yale Repertory Theatre, the internationally celebrated professional theater in residence at Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has become a staple of community theatres and regional repertory houses.

Cast: 4 male

What people say:

"…Mr. Blessing knows how to talk baseball in the form of flavorful theatrical dialogue. In a small tour de force of writing, we're even taken with words on a trip around the bases – no video replay required – with a player whose naked aggression added a frightening dimension to the phrase 'stealing home." — New York Times

"Cobb is a peach of a play, a diamond gem that should score big…Blessing delves skillfully – and even sometimes humorously – into what made the man so competitive and contentious." — International Daily News

About the Playwright:

Lee Blessing is an American playwright who remained in his hometown of Minneapolis working in regional theater before relocating to New York when he was in his forties. The author of over twenty plays and screenplays, he been nominated for Tony and Olivier Awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize. He is professor emeritus at Rutgers University, where for a dozen years he headed the Graduate Playwriting Program of Mason Gross School of the Arts.