About the Play:

H2O has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.

H2O is a full-length drama by Jane Martin. A young Hollywood actor gets rich enough playing a superhero that he is cast – wildly inappropriately – as Hamlet, and allowed to select his own Ophelia. He auditions an evangelical Christian and struggling actress set on getting the role… and saving his life. The title of H2O refers to Hamlet, to Ophelia and to water, a life-giving and life-taking force.

H2O focuses on the man's desire to find the ideal Ophelia as the match for his Hamlet. After arriving in Los Angeles, an aimless young man catapults to movie stardom and into Hollywood's sleazy celebrity culture as the superstar hero of a trio of action movies. Banking on his fame (and name), he is soon selected to appear on Broadway in Hamlet. Given full casting approval, he embarks to New York City to seek out his Ophelia and encounters his muse and his match – a young evangelical Christian woman, who responds tenderly – and maybe a little amorously – to his self-destructive ways. H2O transports audiences into the reclusive, madcap world of Jane Martin's drama/comedy/love story about self-destruction, notoriety, and the dark journey to purity and salvation.

H2O premiered in 2013 at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia during the Contemporary American Theatre Festival and was a finalist for the Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) New Play Award. The New York City premiere was in 2015 Off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been produced in regional theatres and college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent.

Cast: 1 female, 1 male

What people say:

"At turns powerful, tragic, romantic, amoral, unself-conscious and self-obsessed, this complex one-act drama and its two passionate yet oddly distant characters tumble down through the circles of a Dantesque, or perhaps even an existential hell without ever quite grasping the reasons why...This play is so moving and effective, so completely and entirely unforgettable." — Washington Times

"It will leave you dealing not only with your feelings about the characters, but also reconsidering art, life, and The Meaning of It All." — Broadway World

"Yes, H2O is a masterpiece and will surely be performed, difficult as it is, throughout the Christian/Hollywood world ... Martin's H2O embodies America and its Culture War in the 21st century. In fact, H2O is this nation's Culture War writ large, or should I say small, lying embedded in its two-person sadomasochistic love triage. Who will live and who will die? And can one survive without the other?" — Maryland Theatre Guide

About the Playwright:

Jane Martin, apparently from Kentucky, has been referred to as "America's best known, unknown playwright." The name Jane Martin is widely believed to be a pseudonym. She has been nominated for the Pulitzer prize, and won the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award twice. But she has never made any public appearances or spoken about any of her works. Nor has she ever given an interview. No biographical details are known about her. No photographs of Ms. Martin have ever been published.