About the Play:

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

Moonchildren is a full-length dramatic comedy by Michael Weller. A group of American college students comes of age in the 1960s in Moonchildren. Eight soon-to-be graduating students and their house-mates have no purpose in their lives. They march against the staus quo and taunt the "pigs". One feels genuine emotion at his mother's death from cancer, one romance dies, and another is aborted. Ultimately, they realize their lives are as empty as the establishment they protest so vehemently against.

Moonchildren explores the rootless 1960's generation of free-love and protest chronicled in the life of eight "moonchildren" – college roommates living communally. Eventually known as "Boomers," this postwar generation was struggling with the issues of the day including the Vietnam War, bigotry, unemployment and "the point of it all". It's fall of 1965. Malcolm X has been assassinated. MLK Jr. has led the march from Selma to Montgomery. LBJ has announced an order to double the number of men drafted per month. Meanwhile, a group of college seniors shares an over-crowded apartment at their East-coast liberal arts school. Tensions rise as each one grapples with their future and as graduation grows ever closer. A touching and painfully relatable play, the now classic Moonchildren begs the question: how can we face the world if we can't face ourselves?

Moonchildren premiered in 1970 with the title Cancer at the Royal Court Theater in London. The name was changed to Moonchildren for the pre-Broadway engagement in 1971 at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC. It premiered in 1972 at the Royale Theatre on Broadway to rave reviews. It was revived in 1973 at the Theatre De Lys off-Broadway, ran for almost a year and toured. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is produced constantly on the regional repertory and college theater circuit.

Cast: 3 female, 12 male

What people say:

"A phenomenal, virtuoso display of wit and verbal imagination." — New York Times

"Set in the mid-1960s during the height of the Vietnam War, the play may look and sound retro, but it explores themes that are timeless. Free love, rebelling against authority, searching for meaning in one's life – these are themes that will never lose relevancy." — Vox Magazine

"You might assume that a play written in the 1960s about a group of contemporaneous college students would seem hopelessly dated.... But if the work in question is Michael Weller's Moonchildren, such an assumption is unwarranted ... this is a character study of a group of young men and women facing fears and options that are, for the most part, common to post-adolescent Americans of the modern era." — TheaterMania

About the Playwright:

Michael Weller is an award-winning American screenwriter and playwright. The author of over forty plays and movies, he is best known for his plays Moonchildren, Loose Ends, Spoils of War, and Fifty Words. His stage plays have been performed throughout the world, and his work has been awarded an Oscar nomination, New York Critics' Outer Circle Award, Rockefeller Grant, Kennedy Center for New American Drama Award and a citation from the NAACP for outstanding contributions.