About the Play:

Emma's Child has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

Emma's Child is a full-length drama by Kristine Thatcher. A healthy baby is all any new parent asks for. Ten fingers, ten toes. But what happens when a new baby is less than perfect? What happens when a potential adoptive newborn is born… damaged? Can the adoptive parents simply give the baby back? What if they haven't signed the paperwork yet? Those are the questions posed by Emma's Child.

Emma's Child concerns a couple whose adoptive baby turns out to be severely disabled. Jean and Henry Farrell, after years of unsuccessfully attempting to have a baby of their own, decide to adopt. Emma, the birth mother, approves of the couple. Now a new waiting game begins: awaiting the birth of their child. To help Jean through, her best friend Franny comes for a visit, but brings more baggage than a normal traveller as she is separating from her husband, Sam. When the time arrives it is not a happy occasion however, as the baby boy, Robin, is born with Hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, and will not live long. Jean falls for this child anyway; the attention she pays to Robin not only threatens to tear her marriage apart but causes trouble at the hospital as well. Jean has no parental rights, even though Emma has disappeared, and the administrators (despite what the nursing staff have to say) are wary. Eventually Robin succumbs to his condition, leaving Jean and Henry not only having to repair their marriage, but right back where they started – interviewing with a new birth mother. Emma's Child proves to be an amazing analysis of human relationships and struggles.

Emma's Child premiered in 1995 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. The first play ever commissioned by the internationally acclaimed festival, it won the prestigious 1995 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for the best play by a woman in the English language. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops, has enjoyed widespread acceptance among leading regional theatres, and is a popular choice for school and community theatre productions.

Cast: 8 female, 3 male (flexible casting)

What people say:

"…a tear-jerker in the best sense of the term. It is a play that deeply involves the audience with its principle protagonist, that brave little creature, and the adults that are indelibly changed for having been drawn into his orbit." — Ashland Gazette

"…absorbing, amusing and touching…Thatcher keeps an intense, persistent focus on her idea: Life matters and the connection between lives matter." — Seattle Post Intelligencer

About the Playwright:

Kristine Thatcher is an American playwright, director and actress. She is an emerita member of the playwrights ensemble at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. As an actress, she has appeared all of Chicago's top stages; Goodman, Northlight, Chicago Shakespeare, and Writers Theatre, among many others.