About the Play:

Gemini has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes. 

Gemini is a full-length comedic drama by Albert Innaurato. A wealthy brother and sister are both attracted to the same man at the boisterous birthday gathering of an Italian-American family in the summer of 1973 in Philadelphia. Bursting with vitality and creative imagination, Gemini is a funny, perceptive and timely play that enjoyed major critical and popular success in its presentation (first off and then on Broadway) by New York's famed Circle Repertory Company.

Gemini takes place in the backyard of adjoining houses in a blue-collar South Philadelphia neighbourhood in the summer of 1973: one house occupied by divorced labourer Fran Geminiani, his widowed girlfriend Lucille, and his son, Francis, home from Harvard; the other by an earthy divorcée named Bunny and her overweight, asthmatic son, Herschel. It is the eve of Francis' twenty-first birthday, and suddenly he is paid a surprise visit by two friends from college, sometime girlfriend Judith and her twin brother Randy, who set up a tent in the backyard. The Hastings siblings are wealthy, attractive and from an elevated social background that contrasts painfully with Francis' own humble circumstances. In addition, while Judith is in love with Francis, he is infatuated with Randy (or thinks he is) and has to confront, among other things, his sexual orientation. It is from this unsettling discovery that the plot proceeds – a series of lively, funny, touching and revealing incidents that occur in fast-moving, antic succession until the final, joyous moments of the play.

Gemini was first staged in workshop at Playwrights Horizons in 1976. A year later, after some re-writing, it was produced at PAF Playhouse on Long Island. That production subsequently premiered off-Broadway at the Circle Repertory Company in 1977, where it was acclaimed by the major New York critics. The Circle Rep production transferred to Broadway at the Little Theatre (now the Helen Hayes), earning Albert Innaurato an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding New American Play. The production ran for five years and 1,819 performances making it Broadway's longest running comedy and the fourth longest running play in Broadway history. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 4 male

What people say:

"This is a play that comes alive in performance … Mr. Innaurato is a playwright with his own extraordinary voice and the imaginative talent of a conjuror." — New York Times

"Innaurato is an original, of incomparable imagination… Gemini is worthy not only of respect, but of love. Delightfully comic and human." — The New Yorker

"…a rambunctious, hilarious, touching, quite beautiful play." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

Albert Francis Innaurato Jr. (1947-2017) was an American playwright, theatre director, and writer. He graduated from Temple University as a theatre major. From there he went to the California Institute of the Arts and then to the Yale School of Drama during its 1970s golden age, when his classmates included actors Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver, and fellow playwrights Wendy Wasserstein and Christopher Durang. The most successful of all his plays, Gemini, ran on Broadway for five years. It remains today as the fourth-longest running play in Broadway history. He wrote many more plays, though none of these titles matched the success of Gemini. He also wrote screenplays for television and film, adapted operas, and contributed to newspapers and magazines.