About the Play:

The Dying Gaul has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

The Dying Gaul is a full-length dramatic comedy by Craig Lucas. This darkly comic and haunting play is a poison-pen letter to Hollywood and its ability to drain creative talent dry. The Dying Gaul is a compelling story of a complex relationship between an impressionable writer and the producer who seeks his script for film production, to chilling results.

The Dying Gaul is a devastating tale of power, money and seduction in Hollywood. A modern American tragedy about a grieving screenwriter who compromises his ideals to make a small fortune that enables him to climb from invisible poverty into the rarefied seductions and surreal beauty of the Hollywood Hills. Robert's gay lover endured horrific and protracted suffering before Robert helped him to die. Robert's subsequent struggle to come to grips with his own incomprehensible survival and his deep need to find a place in the world that doesn't burn push him into a lush and intoxicating world of sexual ecstasy and intrigue, even as he privately delves into the techniques and teachings of Buddhism for some footing, no matter how tenuous. With breathtaking speed, Robert is caught in a love triangle with a powerful, ruthless and rapacious film producer and his fascinating but woefully under stimulated wife. The lies that Robert perpetrates become inextricably interwoven with theirs each person lying to themselves as much as to their partners and the ones they are betraying. Dealing with AIDS, art, the internet, Hollywood, The Dying Gaul was hailed by many critics as the one of the best plays of the year.

The Dying Gaul premiered in 1998 at the Vineyard Theatre off-Broadway in New York City. The play received high critical praise and was remounted for an additional engagement. Since then the play has been successfully staged at several professional theatres, including a West Coast premiere in 2007 at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco, and was subsequently made into a film.

Cast: 1 female, 3 male

What people say:

"...one of the best plays of the year." — USA Today

"...the best play of the year." — The Wall Street Journal

"Lucas has written a story of uncommon emotional depth and subtlety, a tale in which failed redemption curdles into revenge." — Variety

"Much has changed since Lucas wrote The Dying Gaul ... What hasn't changed is this. The Dying Gaul makes for both gripping drama and ample food for conversation and thought on the way home from the theater – and you can't ask for much more than that." — StageSceneLA

About the Playwright:

Craig Lucas is an American screenwriter, performer, stage and film director, and award-winning playwright. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony nominee, his honours include the L.A. Drama Critics Award, two OBIE Awards, and the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.