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Independence
Independence
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Biz Staff Pick!
Author: Lee Blessing Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 72 Pub. Date: 1985 ISBN-10: 082220567X ISBN-13: 9780822205678 Cast Size: 4 female
* Whole number only
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About
the Play:
Independence has long been a favourite of acting teachers
for Female/Female Scenes.
Independence is a full-length drama by Lee Blessing.
A family crisis brings three sisters together in the Iowa house where
they all grew up, caring for their emotionally-challenged and
dangerously manipulative mother. A powerful female-fueled project,
Independence is the story of a family divided against itself.
Independence is about an uneasy family reunion between a
mother and her three daughters, each attempting to find her own
independence from a mother who feels abandoned first by her husband
then by her children. The setting is the small town of Independence,
Iowa, the lifelong home of Evelyn Briggs. Her oldest daughter, Kess,
is a university professor in Minneapolis, but she has come home at
the request of her sister, Jo who is concerned for Evelyn's mental
health. Kess, a professed lesbian, wants to cut her family ties once
and for all; Jo, an incurable romantic and longtime virgin, has now
become pregnant; while Sherry, salty-tongued and amoral, wants only
to finish high school so she can leave home for good. In the end,
they discover there is no accommodation possible but, instead, only a
kind of arbitrary independence for each of the protagonists, as they
come to realize that each must find her own heaven – or hell – in
her own way.
Independence premiered in 1984 to critical and popular acclaim at the famed Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the annual Festival of New American Plays, an influential showplace for playwrights.
Since then it toured
Scandinavia, premiered in France and Belguim. The
play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and
workshops and has
become a staple of community theatres and regional repertory houses.
Cast: 4 female
What people say:
"Mr. Blessing writes admirably
well timed and weighted dialogue, and the play takes the cleverly
invented characters through to a chilling end." — Plays
and Players (England)
"Blessing has a hair-trigger
sensitivity to what families are saying and doing now, this minute…."
— Dallas Times Herald
"…a delicate balance of
comic and tragic elements." — Louisville News
American
About the Playwright:
Lee Blessing is an American playwright who remained in his
hometown of Minneapolis working in regional theater before relocating
to New York when he was in his forties. The author of over twenty
plays and screenplays, he been nominated for Tony and Olivier Awards
as well as the Pulitzer Prize. He is professor emeritus at Rutgers
University, where for a dozen years he headed the Graduate
Playwriting Program of Mason Gross School of the Arts.
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