About the Play:

Landscape of the Body has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.

Landscape of the Body is a full-length dramatic comedy by John Guare. How difficult is it to become someone new? A single mother's low expectations become big dreams when decides to take over the life of her sister who has died in a freak bicycle accident. Against all odds, this transformation seems to be going well, but then her son is murdered and she is the primary suspect. Landscape of the Body is about the obsession with the unattainable American ideal.

Landscape of the Body is about a small-town woman's tragic search for adventure and independence in early-1970s New York City. Moving back and forth in time, the action of the play is a mosaic of short scenes, monologues and original songs, all blending together into a revealing and affecting story of a woman's unfulfilled life and premature death – and her reflections from the grave. Betty travels to New York to convince her sister Rosalie to leave her gritty New York City life and come home to bucolic Bangor, Maine. After dying in a freak bicycle accident, Rosalie revisits the world she has left behind. From the beyond Rosalie witnesses Betty effortlessly easing into her previous persona – moving into her apartment, taking over her job, but then Betty abruptly loses her teenage son to a gruesome murder. In a sardonic turn of events, Betty finds herself the primary suspect in her son's death. In the end all these various strands are drawn together into a shattering climax – a forceful, moving illumination of lives first betrayed and then destroyed by illusions which, inevitably, lie always behind comprehension and control.

Landscape of the Body premiered in 1977 at the Academy Festival Theatre in Lake Forest, Illinois. That same year it was presented off-Broadway by Joseph Papp at the Public Theatre. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has enjoyed numerous off-Broadway revivals and been mounted by college and community theatres.

Cast: 4 female, 8 male (doubling possible)

What people say:

"Landscape of the Body is quite simply the best work Guare has ever done." — Village Voice

"[Landscape of the Body] has been lost to us too long. As the play points out, life is one long list of regrets. Don't add to your own by missing [Landscape of the Body]." — The New York Times

"Whenever his imagination takes over, whenever his astonishing dramatic talent for creating characters and lines and scenes is let loose, he is invaluable…." — The New Yorker

"There's more invention, more feeling, in Landscape of the Body than in any two plays by most writers." — Newsweek

About the Playwright:

John Guare is an American playwright. He received the Obie, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and Tony nominations for The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, which also won the Olivier Award for Best Play. He won a Tony for his libretto to Two Gentlemen of Verona, which also won the Tony as Best Musical of 1972. His screenplay for Louis Malle's Atlantic City earned him an Oscar nomination.