About the Play:

Dancers is a full-length dramatic comedy by Michael Grady. The play observes the American disregard for the aged with a story that's cynical but not bitter, and funny without aiming its jokes at the elderly. Winner of the American College Theatre Festival and justifiably, for it ranks with Gin Game, Painting Churches and On Golden Pond in gentleness and fondness for its characters not that they're all likeable but even those that aren't are certainly fascinating.

Dancers concerns Kevin, a young man who befriends a septuagenarian, Julia, he meets while visiting his mother in the nursing home where she lives. After his mother dies, Kevin continues to visit the old lady, who rooms with a crusty old man named Jack, who has something bad to say to everybody. Kevin decides that Jack isn't a suitable roommate for his friend, and he arranges to have Julia moved to another room without telling her. A confrontation between Jack and Kevin attracts the attention of a meanspirited nurse, resulting in unpleasant complications for all. But at one of several peaks of climax we see beneath the curmudgeon and understand why he is so rude to the guilty man: because he has seen such people come here before, ingratiate themselves, and then suddenly come no more, leaving the old folks more destitute than before. He wants to protect Julia from such destitution.

Dancers premiered in 1985 at the University of Arizona's Park Theatre and launched Michael Grady's writing career when it won the American College Theatre Festival competition in 1986. The first play he had finished, it has become the most widely produced of his several successful works.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Grady writes with graphic punch and can set up and produce a joke impressively." — The Washington Post

"With Dancers, Grady invites us to contrast the frailties of indecisive youth with the wisdom of maturity. His old folks are nutty, but they're also the only truly competent people here, the only ones who accept both where they're at and where they're going." — The Phoenix New Times

About the Playwright:

Michael Grady is an American playwright who has written over 20 plays. His first play, Dancers, won the National Student Playwriting Award and the William Morris Agency Award.