About the Play:

Death of a Salesman was one of Royal National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.

Death of a Salesman has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Male/Male Scenes.

Death of a Salesman is a full-length drama by Arthur Miller. Salesman Willy Loman finds his career crumbling and his relationships with his wife and sons severely tested in Arthur Miller's dream-like meditation on the cost of the American dream. Regular revivals on Broadway as well as in regional and amateur theatres have made Death of a Salesman one of a small handful of gold-plated stage classics that have practically become a part of the collective psyche.

Death of a Salesman is a thrilling work of deep and revealing beauty that remains one of the most profound classic dramas of the American theatre. The portrait of an ordinary man's struggle to leave his mark on the world, Willy Loman is Arthur Miller's ultimate protagonist. The story revolves around the last days of Willy Loman, the travelling salesman from Brooklyn, who cannot understand how he failed to win success and happiness. Through a series of tragic soul-searching revelations of the life he has lived with his wife, his sons, and his business associates, we discover how his quest for the "American Dream" kept him blind to the people who truly loved him. Hailed as the first great play to lay bare the emptiness of America's relentless drive for material success, no play has ever done a better job of showing us how hard it is to get past our issues, our dreams (American or otherwise), our natures.

Death of a Salesman premiered in 1949 at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway and won the triple crown of theatrical artistry that year: the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Tony Award. More than a decade after the last Broadway revival, in 2012 the play was revived for the fourth time. The star Phillip Seymour Hoffman followed in the well-remembered footsteps of Lee J. Cobb, George C. Scott, Dustin Hoffman, and Brian Dennehy. The single-set show has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 5 female, 8 male

What people say:

"By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater." — The New York Times

"A classic...one of the major texts of our time." — New York Post

"So simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." — Time Magazine

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.