Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty.

        We accept PayPal, Visa & Mastercard
        through our secure checkout.

 

Mastercard                              

 

Quilters

Quilters
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 228
Pub. Date: 1986
Edition: Acting
ISBN-10: 0822209284
ISBN-13: 9780822209287
Cast Size: 7 female, 5 musicians (bit parts)

About the Play:

Quilters has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

Quilters is a full-length musical comedic drama by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek. A pioneer woman and her daughters record the family's hardships and joys in the exquisite quilts they make by hand, each quilt "block" commemorating an event in their lives. Combining music, dance movement and scenes of vivid dramatic intensity, Quilters pays eloquent tribute to the courage and spirit of America's pioneer woman.

Quilters is based on the book The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art by Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley. Ostensibly the story of a pioneer woman and her six daughters, Quilters blends a series of interrelated scenes into a rich mosaic which captures the sweep and beauty, the terror and joy, the harsh challenge and abiding rewards of frontier life. Illuminating stories contained in various patches or "blocks" with music, dance and drama, the action depicts the lot of women on the frontier: girlhood, marriage, childbirth, spinsterhood, twisters, fire, illness and death. But, with this, there is also love, warmth, rich and lively humour and the moving spectacle of simple human dignity and steadfastness in the face of adversity. In the end, when the various patches are assembled into one glorious, brilliantly colourful quilt, the effect is both breathtaking and magical – and a theatrical masterstroke which will linger in the mind and memory long after the house lights have dimmed.

Quilters premiered in 1982 at The Denver Theater Company and became a record-setting regional theater success before its presentation at the Edinburgh Festival (where it won a Fringe First Award). It opened on Broadway in 1984 at the Jack Lawrence Theatre and was nominated for six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The play has been performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 7 female, 5 musicians (bit parts)

What people say:

"Who would have thought that quilts, quilting – quilters – had so much joy and pain, laughter and tears, so much life, beauty and drama in them?" — Drama-Logue

"…an unqualified success, as bright as the colors used in the quilts themselves." — Hollywood Reporter

"Quilters is a show pieced together with love and stitched with pride … a thing of beauty, comfort and joy." — New York Post

"…a tender and moving theatre work, a human patchwork rippling in the breeze of memory." — Newsweek

About the Playwright:

Molly Newman is an Emmy Award-winning television writer and producer. Her varied television career includes Murphy Brown and Frasier. She began her playwriting career as co-author of Quilters, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award and a Helen Hayes Award. Quilters and her second play Shooting Stars have both been produced on the mainstages of several regional theatres including The Mark Taper Forum, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, Houston’s Alley Theatre, The Kennedy Center, The Denver Center Theatre Company and The Pittsburgh Public Theatre. She resides in Los Angeles.