About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Johnny Belinda is a full-length drama by Elmer Harris. A dedicated and humane doctor begins practice in a small village in Nova Scotia. He transforms the world of a deaf mute girl by teaching her to communicate. Local prejudice threatens Belinda who is referred to as "The Dummy". She finds the future of herself and her child hanging in the balance.

Johnny Belinda is about a young deaf woman who has been discriminated against as a mere "creature" by others in her community. The year is 1900. The setting, a lonely island northwest of Nova Scotia, Canada, where a hard-bitten race of farmers divide their time between fishing and tilling the stubborn soil. In the middle of this isolated environment lives the even more isolated Belinda, a young deaf girl whom the backward villagers shun. Having never been taught to communicate, Belinda nonetheless demonstrates sensitivity and intelligence, both of which come to the attention of the village's new doctor who then decides to teach the girl sign language. While Belinda blossoms under his care, and a love relationship begins between them, she still falls prey to a local boy. The result is a child, Johnny Belinda, and it is in defense of her son that Belinda kills the boy's father. The resulting trial pits the entire village against the girl who only has the truth, and the doctor's love, on her side. A true "modern classic."

Johnny Belinda premiered in 1940 at Belasco Theater on Broadway, where it enjoyed immediate and long-run success. It went on to become familiar to millions more through its award-winning motion picture and television presentations. This edition includes specially created, simplified scene designs, plus detailed information regarding the eloquently expressive deaf-mute signs which are so important to the play. It has been performed in regional repertory, middle school, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 7 female, 16 male

About the Playwright:

Elmer Harris (1878-1966) was an American author, dramatist, and playwright. Altogether he created no fewer than eighteen Broadway plays and collaborated on, directed, adapted, and supervised the production of almost thirty-five films and wrote seven original screenplays of his own. Today he is best known for Johnny Belinda, a play loosely based on the life of a woman who lived near his summer home on Prince Edward Island.