About the Play:

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

Echoes is a full-length drama by N. Richard Nash. Welcome to the world of Sam and Tilda, where Christmas is every day and baseball is never out of season. Do they ever take down the decorations? Is their game called due to rain?  Desperate to hold on to their imaginary world in an asylum, two patients resist the one thing that will either save or destroy them: the truth.

Echoes follows a young man and woman as they build a low keyed paradise of happiness within an asylum, only to have it shattered by the intrusion of the outside world. The two characters search, at times agonizingly, to determine the difference between illusion and reality while under constant surveillance. The two struggle to balance their memories of the outside world and the joys of their own re-imagined lives. The effort is lightened by moments of shared love and "pretend" games, like decorating Christmas trees that are not really there. The theme of love, vulnerable to the surveillances of the asylum, and the ministrations of the psychiatrist, a nonspeaking part seems as fragile in the constrained setting as it often is in the outside world.

Echoes was originally produced in 1972 at A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Washington. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in college theatre productions because the author preferred to see it in smaller theatres.

Cast: 1 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Even with the tragic, somber theme there is a note of hope and possible release and the situations presented also have universal applications to give strong effect . . . intellectual, but charged with emotion." — Reed

About the Playwright:

N. Richard Nash (1913-2000), born Nathan Richard Nusbaum, was a prolific and popular American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and teacher whose greatest success was the tender drama The Rainmaker.