About the Play:

Frame 312 has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Female/Female Scenes, and Female/Male Scenes.

Frame 312 is a full-length drama by Keith Reddin. The title refers to a frame in the Abraham Zapruder amateur movie of the John F. Kennedy assassination, the frame showing the fatal shot. Zapruder refused to allow frame 312 to be reproduced. His family accepted the $16 million U.S. government offer for it in 1999. In Frame 312, an ordinary woman, the only living witness who has seen the entire, unadulterated Zapruder film, must decide if, decades later, she's ready to tell her family what she knows.

Frame 312 is a fascinating dramatization of a conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Abraham Zapruder shot 486 frames with his 8-millimeter camera from an ideal vantage point that fateful November day in Dallas. The title comes from a controversial frame of the Zapruder film. LIFE magazine published 31 frames from the footage, but not the one right before the first bullet impacts with President Kennedy's head. It's the 1990s, and Lynette Porter is a suburban housewife. An ex-assistant editor at LIFE magazine, now living in obscurity, she has gathered her family around her to celebrate her birthday. She decides to confess a terrible secret she has kept for 30 years to her family, daughter Stephanie, son Tom and his wife Marie. In the 1960s, when she worked as an assistant on LIFE magazine, she was an 'unwilling' witness to the first showing of the unedited version of the 'Zapruder' film, which depicts the assassination of Kennedy and is different from the film typically shown to Americans. Chosen by her boss to hand over the film to the FBI, Lynette is the last surviving link in this particular chain of mysterious events. Thirty years later and the controversy still rumbles on: Will the retiring ex-assistant forsake her and her family's anonymity for the sake of demonstrating this incontrovertible evidence to the world? This event turns the family's life upside down.

Frame 312 premiered in 2002 at Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, London, England, and had its American premiere later that same year at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.

Cast: 4 female, 2 male

What people say:

""…a solidly engaging show." — New City Chicago

"…an intriguing portrait of the impact that Kennedy's death had on a nation by showing us the remnants of a nuclear family, 30 years later…a thought-provoking, well-acted meditation on what we've all become." — Phoenix New Times

"After a plethora of new American plays aimed at the solar plexus, it is gratifying to find one that appeals to the mind." — The Guardian (London)

"For those millions who are still desperate to get to the bottom of what really happened in Dallas in November 1963 or still worship JFK, Frame 312 should prove thought-provoking." — British Theatre Guide

About the Playwright:

Keith Reddin is an American writer and actor who is considered by many to be a staple of Chicago theatre. He has written and acted in numerous plays with many local, regional, off-Broadway, and Broadway theatres. He graduated from Northwestern University and attended The Yale School of Drama.