About the Play:

Jimmy Shine has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male scene-study showcases.

Jimmy Shine is a full-length comedy by Murray Schisgal. A struggling abstract painter reenacts romantic and other adventures from his past, occasionally in song, and accepts his status as born loser with good humor and only slightly tarnished hope. Jimmy Shine is touching, funny, and filled with the wry perceptions which have become a hallmark of the author's richly comic style.

Jimmy Shine is about a would-be artist who never quite makes it. From grammar school through adolescence and into adulthood, Jimmy Shine just can't seem to get any respect. Not from his friends and especially not from the great cruel world which refuses to recognize his supposed talents as a painter. As described by The New York Post: "The play is about a starving young painter living in a Greenwich Village loft… He is immediately established as mildly freaky: beer chilling on top of an ice cube, a mat of hair pasted on his chest… The play then moves into a flashback structure, which Schisgal handles with consummate skill, moving back and forth from the present to Brooklyn high-school days, a quick trip to San Francisco and a painfully funny attempt at going straight working in a fish store… Shine is super-buddies with a school classmate, as boys are prone to be super-buddies in high school. A born follower, he is talked into skipping college by his pal, the idea being to become Village painters. Though he has neither an interest in nor a talent for painting, his friend – the ultimate phoney – convinces him that it is possible. So he goes off to paint while the buddy decides to go to college. As it turns out, need I say, the buddy never does become a painter. He goes into his father's real-estate business and marries the girl Shine adored. So the artist holes up in his loft, painting terrible pictures and dreaming about the girls he never gets while satisfying himself with a lovely and quite real prostitute… When the play ends, he is still nowhere – still painting though now relieved of taking himself seriously – and so at last capable of doing something. For Schisgal (and for me) the only thing that counts is what you do. Properly, the ending is neither sweet – though it may seem that way – nor sour. It is merely right and the play of course, is the story of an artist."

Jimmy Shine had pre-engagements at the Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore and at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia before it premiered in 1968 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway in New York City. Dustin Hoffman made his Broadway debut in the title role and went on to star in the 1982 comedy classic Tootsie, which Murray Schisgal co-wrote. The two continued to collaborate and remained friends for more than 50 years. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and it has been performed in college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent.

Cast: 9 female, 9 male

What people say:

"Mr. Schisgal is a brilliant writer of comedy, and his play is filled with delightful things." — New York Post

"…a constant joy in its own distinctive and beguiling manner." — New York Newsday

"…a funny, lovely, painfully gentle play that manages – without being fake, sensitive or psychedelically souped up – to understand just the thinking of today's young people." — Women's Wear Daily

About the Playwright:

Murray Schisgal (1926-2020) was a Tony and Academy Award nominated American playwright and screenwriter best known for co-writing the screenplay for Tootsie. He attended Brooklyn Law School from which he graduated in 1953. He practised law until 1956 and then taught English for three years. He had an extensive career spanning writing plays, novels, anthologies, science fiction, and play producing. He has a star on the Playwrights Sidewalk for Off-Broadway Achievement in New York. He has also produced several films and television programs.