About the Play:

Winner of the 1986 Obie Award for Best New Play

Drinking in America a full-length comedy by Eric Bogosian. A collection of hilarious, tough, and touching theatrical monologues, which depicts a variety of typically American excesses that are mostly funny but occasionally poignant. Eric Bogosian questions stereotypes by embodying them, forcing people to question their own carefully contrived boundaries when confronted with the fierce portrayals of people on the edges of society whose inner tirades strangely match our own.

Drinking in America looks at what turns people on. These 12 monologues were originally performed in New York City by the author, but can be performed by several actors, portraying over a dozen different characters all displaying some form of inebriation or addiction, either to alcohol, drugs, power, a sense of being "normal," money, love or sex, and savagely dissects their willing intoxication. From a grasping show-biz hustler to a latter-day Willy Loman on the road; from a ghetto junkie to a gyrating heavy-metal rock star, the result is a blisteringly funny series of monologues, portraits of people who have gotten high on hedonism being peddled as the American dream. Drinking in America is a wild, nightmarish ride through an America where success can excuse a lot of faults. It's an unforgettable journey made all the more disturbing because of the laughter the audience encounters along the way.

Drinking in America opened to great acclaim in 1986 at the American Place Theater, played off-Broadway to sold-out houses for month after month, and would go on to win Eric Bogosian an Obie for Best New Play and a Drama Desk Award the same year for outstanding solo performance. The play has been performed in regional repertory, fringe festival, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 man (flexible casting: can be played by as many as 12 actors)

What people say:

"Bogosian's gallery of crazy drunks straddles the social gamut, from a wino lying in the gutter to a coked up Hollywood talent agent. What they all share is their pathetic need to be "special' and their reliance on drink and drugs to fool them into thinking that fantasy is real." — The New York Post

"A breakneck, hair raising comic tour of the American psyche." — The New York Times

"Cleverly written.... It sinks its teeth deep into American and gives us something to chew on." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

Eric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologist and novelist renowned for employing his dark wit in the fearless examination the darker side of human nature. He is the author of three novels, several films and numerous award-winning plays and solos for the theatre. As an actor he has starred onstage as well as on film and television.