About the Play:

Lemon Sky has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Female/Female Scenes.

Lemon Sky is a powerful and moving full-length drama by Lanford Wilson. At seventeen Alan travels from Nebraska to San Diego to reconnect with his estranged father, now remarried and with two young sons. Two teenage foster daughters complete the new family Alan enthusiastically embraces. Pulitzer-winning playwright Lanford Wilson's autobiographical drama, Lemon Sky looks back on his teenage years as he crossed the country to live with his estranged father's second family.

Lemon Sky is a highly autobiographical play about memories and might-have-beens. At seventeen, Alan visits the California home of his father and his father's former mistress turned wife. His father's life now centres around his two young sons, a tiresome job at an aircraft plant, and two teenage girls who are boarded with the family by the state. Alan has come expecting to go to school full time and work part time at the plant, having accepted his father's encouragement to do so. But the older man is incapable of honesty, least of all emotional honesty, and his lies about school are worth about as much as his lies about love. In the end, his cruelty, insecurity and lechery bring on an inevitable collision that destroys all that the father and son had hoped for. Alan is driven away once more, embittered by the knowledge that he must live without the father he so desperately wants and needs. Critically hailed in its New York production, Lemon Sky explores the alienation between a son and his father with rare perception and honesty.

Lemon Sky premiered in 1970 at the Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo, New York, and then opened later that same year off-Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre. Since then it was revived to acclaim off-Broadway at the Second Stage Theatre in 1985. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and  has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.

Cast: 3 female, 2 male and 2 boys

What people say:

"…Mr. Wilson can write; his characters spring alive on stage; he holds our attention, he engages our heart." — New York Times

"…Wilson at his loveliest and most true. He is one of the very most talented writers in all the American theatre…." — Women's Wear Daily

"His language is rich and forceful, yet conveys a sense of graceful ease and breezy humor." — Cue Magazine

About the Playwright:

Lanford Wilson (1937-2011) was one of the most distinguished American playwrights of the late 20th century. He was instrumental in drawing attention to Off-Off Broadway, where his first works were staged in the mid-1960s. He was also among the first playwrights to move from that milieu to renown on wider stages, ascending to Off Broadway, and then to Broadway, within a decade of his arrival in New York. His work has also long been a staple of regional theaters throughout the United States. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.