About the Play:

Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead is a full-length comedy by Eric Bogosian. The author's stunning and massively successful exploration of American urban and suburban life as it exists out of the mainstream is a collection of searing multi-character monologues that are darkly funny and eerily prophetic. They feel like the answer to the question on everyone's lips, "How did we get here?"

Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead is a classic series of multi-character monologues. When he first staged the play, to rave reviews, the North American economy was slowly coming out of a slump, Bill Clinton was President of the United States and the political divide between left and right was widening with the proliferation of right-wing talk-radio. People on both sides of the divide were feeling cynical and upset. Sound familiar...? Now is the perfect time to revisit this anthology of searing and prescient monologues that are by turns, comic, satiric and poignant, and describe many of the contemporary dilemmas of modern American society. Culled from astute observation, Eric Bogosian explores the displaced lives and dreams of the denizens that inhabit modern culture's urban fringe. From subway panhandlers to barbecue-crazed millionaires. He reveals the hidden humour, fear, hypocrisy and rage of Americans – including, for the first time, "Eric Bogosian," a hyper-aggressive standup comic. With this seductive element of self-revelation, he heightens the disturbing connections between his characters and, by extension, between us and the people we try not to see – and not to be – every day. These raucous, take no prisoners' monologues are also highly entertaining and darkly funny.

Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead premiered in 1984 at the Minetta Lane Theatre off-Broadway in New York City. The play has been performed in regional repertory, fringe, and college theatre productions.

Cast: 1 man (flexible casting, may be performed by several actors)

What people say:

"Rough and riotous... [This author] is, quite possibly, our most vibrant bringer of bad tidings." — The New York Times

"Eric Bogosian has to be reckoned the best endowed taboo breaker the theatre has got." — New York Daily News

"No one can better articulate the anger and absurdity of urban America." — Associated Press

"It's brilliance still has me laughing in incredulous admiration." — The New York Post

About the Playwright:

Eric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologist and novelist renowned for employing his dark wit in the fearless examination the darker side of human nature. He is the author of three novels, several films and numerous award-winning plays and solos for the theatre. As an actor he has starred onstage as well as on film and television.