About the Play:

E/R (Emergency Room) is a full-length drama by Dr. Ronald Berman. This terrific comic drama, which follows the staff of a Chicago Hospital's Emergency Room during one particularly crazy Saturday night as a "parade of humanity" passes through its doors, is full of non-stop action, hilarity and drama that all make for one memorable evening of theatre.

E/R (Emergency Room) was a smash hit for Chicago's famed Organic Theatre Company, broke the theatre's box office record and went on to erase Organic's formidable debt. It was conceived by Ronald L. Berman, M.D. and written by Dr. Berman along with Organic Theater members, Zaid Farid, Richard Fire, Stuart Gordon, Gary Houston, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Tom Towles and Bruce A. Young. The show's concept was developed after artistic director Stuart Gordon talked his friend Dr. Berman into taping his outrageous (and entertaining) stories of working in the ER and then shared these stories with the ensemble members of his Organic Theater Company. The actors went on to do research of their own, spending time in emergency rooms around Chicago, writing and ad-libbing scenes until they had a full-length show. An erstwhile cast of 18 plays various characters who inhabit and/or pass through the very realistically conceived emergency room. The production caught on immediately, thanks mostly to the positive word of mouth generated by real doctors and nurses who were invited to check out the show in its opening weeks. Nominated for the coveted "Best Regional Play" award of the American Theatre Critics Association, E/R (Emergency Room) is one of the biggest hits in the history of the Organic Theatre.

E/R (Emergency Room) opened in 1982 at the Organic Theater in Chicago and went on to have a hugely successful run, spawned hit productions in New York and Los Angeles and then caught the attention of pioneering producer Norman Lear who developed a series and gave a young hotshot actor named George Clooney his first break in television on a prime-time sit-com ironically titled E/R. Dr. Ronald Berman worked as the medical adviser to the series.

Cast: 7 female, 9 male, 1 boy, 1 girl

What people say:

"It's terrific." — Los Angeles Times

"A kaleidoscope of crackling comedy and drama." — Lerner Skyline Newspapers

About the Playwright:

Dr. Ronald L. Berman is a veteran of emergency room drama. During his residency in internal medicine, he moonlighted as an emergency room physician and collected stories about emergency room life, which he shared with his old high school friend, Stuart Gordon (who went on to become a popular cult horror film director in Hollywood), and he encouraged Dr. Berman to write a play based on his emergency room experiences.