About the Play:

Eleemosynary has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Female/Female Scenes, and Three-Female Scenes.

Eleemosynary is a full-length drama by Lee Blessing. Sensitive and probing, Eleemosynary is a masterful play that examines the subtle and often perilous mother-daughter relationship between three generations of intellectually gifted women: a free-spirited grandmother; her conservative daughter; and her granddaughter – a child of exceptional intellect.

Eleemosynary probes into the delicate relationship of three singular women living up to the expectations of others – as well as each other: the grandmother, Dorothea, who has sought to assert her independence through strong-willed eccentricity; her brilliant and complete opposite daughter, the scientifically minded Artie (Artemis), who has fled the stifling domination of her controlling mother; and Artie's daughter, Echo, a child of exceptional intellect – and sensitivity – whom Artie has abandoned to be raised by Dorothea. As the play begins, Dorothea has suffered a stroke, and while Echo has reestablished contact with her mother, it is only through extended telephone conversations, during which real issues are skirted. Their talk is mostly about the precocious Echo's single-minded domination of a national high school spelling bee contest, which she wins when she spells the word "eleemosynary" (which means "of or supported by gifts or charity"). But, in the end, after Dorothea's death, both Artie and Echo come to accept their mutual need and summon the courage to try, at last, to build a life together – despite the risks and terrors that this holds for both of them after so many years of alienation and estrangement.

Eleemosynary was presented in 1985 at the Park Square Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since then it received its professional premiere in 1987 at the Philadelphia Festival of New Plays, and has been produced widely at professional theatres, including a 1996 production at West Coast Ensemble in Los Angeles that won the 1997 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award. With a small all-female cast and minimal, flexible staging requirements, it has become a staple of college and community theatres, regional repertory houses, and high schools.

Cast: 3 female

What people say:

"…a play and a production of a caliber rarely seen on the Philadelphia stage … the language is elegant, witty and carefully wrought." — Philadelphia City Paper

"…an engrossing 95-minute entry – alternately funny and poignant…." — Minneapolis Star and Tribune

"…a funny, perceptive and eloquently written play…." — St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch

About the Playwright:

Lee Blessing is an American playwright who remained in his hometown of Minneapolis working in regional theater before relocating to New York when he was in his forties. The author of over twenty plays and screenplays, he been nominated for Tony and Olivier Awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize. He is professor emeritus at Rutgers University, where for a dozen years he headed the Graduate Playwriting Program of Mason Gross School of the Arts.