About the Play:

Scarcity has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Female Scenes.

Scarcity is a full-length drama by Lucy Thurber. A family trapped in poverty and struggling to make ends meet has a chance to get their brilliant son into an advanced program when his obsessed math teacher becomes mesmerized by his intellect and offers to help with his college dreams. But what are her real intentions? And will the family grab this golden opportunity for a way out?

Scarcity revolves around a struggling poor family with two high-IQ children whose aspirations to escape the confines of poverty and small town life come into direct conflict with their sense of family responsibility. In a small town in Western Massachusetts, the Lawrence family struggles with poverty, boredom and lost potential. Into this isolated town comes Ellen, a highly educated, wealthy and well-traveled young woman who wants to give back to her country through education. She starts teaching in the public high school where Billy and Rachel Lawrence go, and she develops an obsession with Billy's intelligence, insight and potential. Her obsession and desire to lift 16-year-old Billy out of poverty tears the family apart. Scarcity is about the pull between the loyalty you feel for your family and the loyalty you feel towards your own personal dreams.

Scarcity premiered in 2007 at The Atlantic Theater Company off Broadway in New York City. The West Coast premiere was in 2009 at the Imagined Life Theater in Los Angeles. Since then the play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male

What people say:

"In Thurber's world, sex is less a quest for pleasure or an expression of love than it is the retardation of emotion. And this is where Thurber makes her mark as an artist: She shows us how some parents would rather keep their offspring in their muck than allow them an opportunity for advancement…Thurber belongs to a generation of young female playwrights…all of whom grew up watching shows like 'Roseanne' but were able to peel away the laughs and reveal the ugly lives beneath." — The New Yorker

"Thurber writes with both humor and pathos about this household, whose family values of love and loyalty are constantly put to the test in an environment of poverty, ignorance and casual violence. Behind the snappy dialogue and brazenly comic characterizations, she also shows genuine tenderness toward people who rarely get that kind of treatment on the stage." — Variety

"A gripping new play. Anybody seeking a sizzling hunk of red-blooded American realism should grab this show. Thurber develops her characters with a compassionate eye and a sense of real-life humor…a thoroughly absorbing experience." — The Star-Ledger (NJ)

"…[an] engrossing look at ambition and ambivalence on the wrong side of the tracks…an uncomfortable yet eminently watchable Northeastern Gothic… Scarcity has strong, messy, vibrant characters…[whose] motivations remain pleasurably inscrutable…and the overall impression is of a messed-up family being true to one another in their fashion." — New York Sun

"Scarcity ... is a harrowing yet miraculously tender account of promise thwarted by poverty in myriad forms – economic, emotional, social and many others as well." — Los Angeles Times

"…a disturbing yet compelling picture of contemporary life in the lower depths…the story plays out with affecting grittiness…Thurber is an unflinching observer of the lifestyle of an all-too-large underclass in a society that has always defined itself as classless." — CurtainUp

About the Playwright:

Lucy Thurber is an award winning American playwright based in New York City. She is the recipient of Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship, the first Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting, a proud recipient of a Lilly Award, an OBIE Award for The Hill Town Plays cycle, and The Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwriting Award. She has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Sarah Lawrence College.