About the Play:

Life During Wartime has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.

Life During Wartime is a full-length comedic drama by Keith Reddin. A dark and menacing comedy about Tommy, an impressionable young man selling home security alarms door-to-door who falls in love with his first customer, an older divorcee Gale. When his boss reveals the company's plan to use the security alarms to commit crimes, Tommy is faced with telling Gale or going on with his employer's plans.

Life During Wartime may take its title from a Talking Heads song about the violence in modern urban centres, but it also refers to the internal struggle of the protagonist, a naive young man who recognizes he must take a stand against the moral corruption rife in society. The play begins with Tommy being initiated into the hard sell tactics of a home-security company by his boss Heinrich and his associate Sally. "Let's face it – it's a dangerous world. You don't have to sell fear – it sells itself," Heinrich advises Tommy. On his first assignment, Tommy meets Gale, a divorced mother with whom he immediately falls in love even though she is quite a few years older than he and has a teen-age son. Tommy faces serious moral dilemmas when Heinrich reveals that alarms occasionally go unanswered so that the company can profit from selling system upgrades to victims and new systems to the victims' neighbours. Just after Tommy decides to propose to Gale, her house is broken into and both she and her son, Howard, are killed. In the second act, Tommy confronts Heinrich with the break-in, but Heinrich refuses to accept responsibility, saying that Tommy was naive to believe in the possibility of finding happiness in such a dangerous world. Tommy begins to receive visits from Gale's ghost who comforts him. Throughout the play, the spirit of John Calvin, founder of the Protestant work ethic, whose belief in humanity's sinfulness from birth threads the play with the same feeling of hopelessness and futility that Tommy experiences upon the loss of Gale. It isn't until the last scene when Tommy meets Megan, a woman who might possibly be the reincarnation of Gale, that he comes to believe in the possibility of honestly and lovingly living in the modern world despite the hardships one inevitably faces. Life During Wartime is a side-splitting romp that examines the enormous difference between feeling secure and being secure.

Life During Wartime premiered in 1990 at the Lajolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California. The New York premiere was off-Broadway at the famed Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) in 1991. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres in the US. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent.

Cast: 2 female, 4 male

What people say:

"…an absurdist tragedy – a black comedy that sets out boldly for those modish laughs…and then turns some corner of feeling and shudders into real emotion." — New York Post

"Reddin…creates roles that actors can sink their teeth into… Reddin is a gifted writer." — Variety

"A BLAST! Provokes thought while also entertaining." — Maine Sunday Telegram

About the Playwright:

Keith Reddin is an American writer and actor who is considered by many to be a staple of Chicago theatre. He has written and acted in numerous plays with many local, regional, Off-Broadway, and Broadway theatres. He graduated from Northwestern University and attended The Yale School of Drama.