About the Play:

The Goodbye People has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.

The Goodbye People is a full-length comedy by Herb Gardner. A Coney Island hot dog salesman comes out of retirement to risk everything on reopening his old hotdog stand, dormant these 22 years while its owner has humbled himself in the service of a fast food empire. The pursuit of this neon utopia raises questions of identity, culture, and existence itself on the very long walk off a very short pier.

The Goodbye People is a serious comedy about an old man's dreams for a renewed life tied to his Coney Island beach bar and about the woes of youthful misfits and their loves. It is Coney Island in the middle of Winter and hopeful Max Silverman, recovering from a coronary, is planning to reopen his long closed boardwalk hot-dog shack with the entrapped assistance of his daughter, Shirley, who has just had a nose job, has changed her name to Nancy, deserted her husband and is searching for an identity. Into their dreams and lives wanders a stranger, Arthur Korman, a youngish, amiable sunrise watcher who hates his job, but never seems able to make a decision to quit. The three of them together activate their dreams – Arthur quits his job, Nancy decides to divorce her husband and Max will reopen his stand. But in the end, death takes Max, but only after his dream is fulfilled. Written by Tony Award winning author of A Thousand Clowns, and I'm Not Rappaport.

The Goodbye People premiered in 1968 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway. Revived on Broadway in 1979 at the Belasco Theatre, the play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions..

Cast: 1 female, 5 male

What people say:

"An endearing play." — New York Daily News

"The Goodbye People is a human and often funny character study. It's a telling treatise on aging (at any age), and on trusting in our need to want for more (at any age)." — The Denver Post

"His best play." — Jules Feiffer

"Herb Gardner is one of the truly original comic minds in the world. He is also a poet. And The Goodbye People is one of the most truly comic stage poems you will ever see." — Paddy Chayevsky

About the Playwright:

Herb Gardner (1934-2003) was an American commercial artist, cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter. Born in Brooklyn, he was educated at the New York High School of the Performing Arts, the Carnegie Institute of Technology and Antioch College. He first came to public attention in the 1950s as the author of The Nebbishes, a nationally syndicated comic strip about social gadflies, which he retired in 1960 to concentrate on writing. Best known for his Broadway hits A Thousand Clowns, I'm Not Rappaport and Conversations With My Father, he wrote few plays but their undeniable humour and commercial appeal made him among the most produced playwrights worldwide.