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Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train
Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train
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Author: Stephen Adly Guirgis Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 67 Pub. Date: 2002 Edition: Acting ISBN-10: 0822217996 ISBN-13: 9780822217992 Cast Size: 1 female, 4 male
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About
the Play:
Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train has long been a favourite of
acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and
Female/Male Scenes.
Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train is a full-length drama by
Stephen Adly Guirgis. Set in New York's notorious Rikers
Island jail, a youth accused of shooting the leader of a religious
cult has colourful arguments about legal and divine justice with a
serial killer who has found God. Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train is
a powerful prison drama that explores the crisis of faith, identity
and the search for redemption.
Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train is the strong-willed moral play
that put its author, and his theater company, on the map. Angel Cruz
is a thirty-year-old bike messenger from New York City who has lost
his best friend to a religious cult. At the opening of the play, he
is in his second night of incarceration at infamous Rikers Island,
awaiting trial for shooting the leader of that cult in his
"water-buffalo"-sized backside. He is on his knees, alone
and terrified, trying to say a prayer he no longer remembers to a God
he has all but forgotten. Angel's public defender is Mary Jane
Hanrahan, still relatively young but very nearly disillusioned. At
their first meeting, she mistakes Angel for another case. Wounded by
her pride and Angel's sharp attacks, she mangles this initial
interview and walks out. A crisis of conscience and an unresolved
connection to her childhood brings her back, and Angel's heartfelt,
persuasive arguments against the cult leader persuade her to champion
his cause. By this time, the cult leader, Reverend Kim, has died on
the operating table, and the charge against Angel is now murder.
Angel has been beaten regularly by other inmates and is discovered in
his cell barely conscious with a bed sheet tied around his neck. He
is transferred to a special twenty-three-hour lockdown wing of
protective custody. His jailer is Valdez, a brutally direct prison
guard who believes in a world of black and white only. No grey areas
permitted. Valdez has taken the post of Charlie D'amico, a guard
Angel never meets. For one hour a day, Angel experiences daylight
from a cage on the Riker's Island Prison roof. His only source of
human contact is the lone inmate who is also in protective custody.
Lucius Jenkins, a.k.a. "the Black Plague," works out
furiously in the cage next to Angel. A sociopathic serial killer
awaiting extradition to Florida, Lucius pauses from his workouts only
to chain smoke and to "save" Angel. Lucius Jenkins has
found God, and Angel's life and the course of his trial will be
changed forever. Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train challenges
audiences to reflect on forgiveness, resilience and the American
Justice system.
Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train
premiered in 2000 at East 13th Street Theater by off-Broadway's
LAByrinth Theatre Company. The play received its international debut
in 2001 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning a prestigious
"Fringe First Award". The production then moved to London's
Donmar Warehouse in 2002, before transferring to The Arts Theatre in
the West End, where it was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best
New Play – the ultimate standard in British playwriting. The
play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and
workshops and is
regularly performed in regional, college, and community theatre
productions.
Cast: 1 female, 4 male
What people say:
"…fire-breathing…[a]
probing, intense portrait of lives behind bars…whenever it appears
that [the play] is settling into familiar territory, it slides right
beneath expectations into another, fresher direction. It has the
courage of its intellectual restlessness…[Jesus Hopped
the 'A' Train] has been written in flame." —
The New York Times
"Jesus Hopped
the A Train is a funny, powerful, adrenaline-fueled drama
of good and evil, penalty and redemption written by Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis,
one of America's most exciting and admired writers." —
Backstage
"Its aggressive
high-octane style is like a shot of caffeine straight in the veins."
—The Guardian
"Stunningly
well-written … It is impossible to praise the electrifying
performances in Philip Seymour Hoffman's
remorselessly intense production too highly ... The theatrical event
of the year." —The Daily Telegraph
About the Playwright:
Stephen Adly Guirgis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American
playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. Born and raised in New
York City by an Irish-American mother and Egyptian father, he studied
theatre at the State University of New York in Albany before being
recruited by John Ortiz and Philip Seymour Hoffman to
join New York City's non-profit LAByrinth Theater Company, of which
he later became a co-artistic director. His screenwriting credits
have included TV shows such as NYPD Blue and The Sopranos, and his
play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize
for Drama. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
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