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No Villian
No Villian
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Author: Arthur Miller Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Format: Softcover # of Pages: 59 Pub. Date: 2017 ISBN-10: 0822236508 ISBN-13: 9780822236504 Cast Size: 2 women, 6 men
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About the Play:
No Villain is a full-length drama by Arthur Miller.
This remarkable debut play shows
a playwright at
the beginning of his extraordinary career,
grappling with the issues of labour
and society as well as displaying the intra-family relationships that
would come to define his entire body of work.
No Villain
centres on the Simon family, an immigrant family with their own
garment business who are staring down a workers’ strike that
threatens to put them out of business. Over six days during spring
break 1936 at the University of Michigan, a 20-year-old college
sophomore wrote his first play No
Villain.
His aim was to win the prestigious Avery Hopwood Award and, more
importantly, the $250 prize he needed in order to return to college
the following year. Miller won the award, and the subsequent one, but
the play was never produced until 2015.
Arthur Miller himself said, "My
first attempt at a play, rather inevitably, had been about industrial
action and a father and his two sons, the most autobiographical
dramatic work I would ever write." The play tells the story of a
garment industry strike that sets a son against his father, a
strike-plagued factory-owner whose struggle to survive the
depredations of working life would be further explored – and
refined – by Willy Loman in the classic drama Death of a
Salesman.
Arthur Miller's gritty debut drama, No Villain
premiered in 2015 to critical acclaim and sell-out performances at
the Old Red Lion Theatre, a small fringe theatre above a north London
pub. In 2016 the production transferred to a commercial run at
Trafalgar Studios in London's West End.
Cast: 2 women, 6 men
What people say:
"…[No Villain]
is recognisably the apprenticeship of a theatrical genius…Miller
gives a sense of knowing where he was going from the start…Most
startling, though, is to be shown the embryo of Death of a
Salesman…[a] thrilling discovery…[a] gripping and intelligent
drama…." — The Guardian
(UK)
"…absolutely
brilliant…Undiscovered early works are not invariably the best
predictors of their author’s future fame, but No Villain
is a remarkable exception…the urgent authenticity of the dialogue,
the stifling account of the love, terror and resentment of a family
in crisis, the desperation of ordinary men trying to survive in
extraordinary times, are the work of a young writer who has already
discovered his voice." — The Daily Telegraph
(UK)
About the Playwright:
Arthur
Miller (1915-2005) is considered one of the great American
playwrights. During the Depression, finances were scarce and he paid
for his college tuition by working as a shipping clerk in a New York
factory. He later wrote his first plays in college. With a career
that spanned over 50 years, he wrote more than thirty plays that
transformed American Theatre and proved to be both the conscience and
redemption of the times. His probing dramas received many awards in
his lifetime, including two Emmy awards and three Tony Awards for his
plays, a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Pulitzer Prize
for Drama in 1949, for Death of a Salesman.
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