About the Play:

Keely and Du has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Female/Female Scenes.

Keely and Du is a full-length drama by Jane Martin. Somewhere, a group is holding a young woman in a locked room against her will. They aren't going to hurt her. They don't want any ransom. They just want to change her mind about her unwanted pregnancy. As thought provoking as it is controversial, Keely and Du is about the humanity that underscores our convictions and the prices we pay for them.

Keely and Du is the story of two women at opposite ends of the abortion issue. Keely – a pregnant rape victim wants to terminate her pregnancy. But on her way to the abortion, she is abducted by a right-to-life group called Operation Retrieval. The activists hope to prevent Keely's abortion by holding her until she has her child. She wakes up in a basement, hundreds of miles from where she was, restrained to a bed. Across from her sits an older woman named Du, who has been assigned to watch over and care for her, while Keely carries her pregnancy to term. Working under guidance from Walter, a religiously motivated pro-life organizer, Du does her best to convert Keely to a pro-life stance. As the relationship between the two women grows, each transcend their circumstances and the ideological issues that separate them. On the surface, the characters' conflicting viewpoints seem predictable, with clear villains and heroes delineated on either side. But as the taut narrative unfolds, the characters and audience are faced with a reality that is far more complex and complicated than pro/anti labels could ever encompass. Who is accountable? What is the extent of individual freedom? What are a rape victim's rights? What is a Christian's realities of procreation? Perhaps more timely now than when it was written, Keely and Du brings one of the most divisive issues of our time to the stage – a woman's right to choose and the rights of the unborn.

Keely and Du premiered in 1993 at the famed Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the annual Festival of New American Plays, an influential showplace for playwrights. It won the 1993 American Theatre Critics Association Award for Best New Play and was one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1994. The Canadian premiere was in 1995 by Phoenix Theatre at the Kaasa Theatre in Edmonton. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been staged throughout North America.

Cast: 3 female, 2 male and 3 extras

What people say:

"A play with extremely provocative accoutrements is a lot less controversial than it looks. At heart Keely and Du is an intelligent and compassionate chronicle of a friendship developed under adverse circumstances. It's a hostage drama where prisoner and guard come to appreciate each other a bit, and understand that radically opposing beliefs of the gut-level variety are forged in the fire of Life. Mere rhetoric, no matter how inflammatory (or loud), won't melt them down. And this isn't the play to suggest what will." — The Edmonton Journal

"Keely and Du is a moving, poignant ... commentary on both sides of the coin, and how no one opinion can actually be considered 'right.' ... Keely and Du is a beautiful look into dangerous, difficult questions, and helps make sense of the fine balance between human compassion and moral duty." — Calgary Herald

"Compelling ... A connection between two women distanced by all creation is shaped with ineffable grace... Bound to stir vigorous discussion." — New York Times

"Brings a bit of light as well as heat to an already red hot topic." — Los Angeles Times

"Disturbingly important." — Irish Times

"So well plotted that its build up is inexorable and gripping, its denouement at once inevitable and shocking." — Financial Times

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.