Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty.

        We accept PayPal, Visa & Mastercard
        through our secure checkout.

 

Mastercard                              

 

Finks

Finks
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: Joe Gilford
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 63
Pub. Date: 2014
Edition: Acting
ISBN-10: 0822229722
ISBN-13: 9780822229728
Cast Size: 1 female, 7 male

About the Play:

Finks is a full-length drama by Joe Gilford. The struggles of two New York actors who fall in love and are blacklisted during the McCarthy Red Scare of the 1950s. The background is New York TV, radio, nightclubs and the theatre. Would you fink on your friends to save your career? ...Are you sure?

Finks is a tale of a time of paranoia, loyalty and betrayal, show business and show trials, told from the life of two young entertainers. On the verge of TV stardom, comic Mickey Dobbs meets Natalie Meltzer, a working actor who is also an impassioned political activist, and their romance blossoms – as does the risk that they'll be blacklisted for their political activities. In the face of the House Un-American Activities Committee, tasked with exposing communist subversion in New York's entertainment world, Mickey and Natalie endure the absurd and tragic process that enveloped progressives in the arts, some Communists, some not, and turned friends and colleagues against each other. For some, the blacklist will mean a decade without work. For others, it will spell the end of their careers. And those who willingly testify – naming others to the committee – will be branded as "finks". In Finks, Joe Gilford documents the struggle his parents, blacklisted actors Jack Gilford and Madeline Lee Gilford, endured when they were called to testify. This play is about names, the naming of names, career-determining choices and finks.

Finks premiere in 2008 at New York Stage & Film's Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College. The New York premiere was in 2013 at The Ensemble Studio Theatre where it was a New York Times Critics Pick and was nominated for New York's Drama Desk Outstanding Play and the Off-Broadway Alliance's Best New Play. It has been produced regionally as well as critically acclaimed productions in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Cast: 1 female, 7 male

What people say:

"Joe Gilford's impassioned, autobiographical Finksis a testament to the parents who managed to maintain their indomitable spirit throughout the ordeal." — Huffington Post

"…a bracing play about McCarthyism." — New York Times

"Forget blue jokes; the humor in Finks, Joe Gilford's farsighted yet tender tribute to his blacklisted parents, is distinctly red. But it's part of what makes this play…as Gilford tries to understand why some of the accused betrayed friends to keep their livelihoods, he demonstrates a pluck similar to that of his parents." — Time Out NY

"...well-crafted play, it remains a heartfelt and timely reminder of the fundamental importance of resisting the forces of despotism, whatever the cost." — Los Angeles Times

About the Playwright:

Joe Gilford is an author, playwright and screenwriter. He has worked in film, TV and theatre, as a producer, writer and director for over 30 years. He has also served as story consultant and script doctor on numerous independent feature films. He is a nationally known lecturer on screenwriting and since 1999 he has taught screenwriting at NYU's Undergraduate Film & TV Dept., Tisch School of the Arts.