About the Play:

Short Eyes has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male/Male Scenes.

Short Eyes is a full-length drama by Miguel Piñero. The inmates of a prison band together sexually, personally and in their shared hatred of an incarcerated child molester. Miguel Piñero wrote the play while he was in jail serving time for armed robbery. Short Eyes, which is a slang term that prisoners use for a child molester, follows the lives of a racially mixed group of inmates at a New York prison, where they are joined by a white middle-class man accused of raping a young girl.

Short Eyes is a gripping drama that deals with the complexities of daily life in a New York State Penitentiary where a group of young convicts – predominantly black and Puerto Rican – taunt, fight, insult, and entertain one another in an attempt to preserve their sanity and to create a semblance of community, all the while punctuated by an ever-looming threat of violence and shifting alliances. When a young white prisoner accused of child molesting is thrown into the cell block by a guard who says he belongs in Sing Sing because "the men up there know what to do with degenerates like you," the stage is set for an explosive series of events; for, among prisoners, this child molester called "Short Eyes," the prison slang for a molester, is the lowest of criminals. What ensues is a search for morality and justice in an unassuming place. Short Eyes became the first play written by a Puerto Rican playwright to be put on Broadway.

Short Eyes was first presented in 1974 at Riverside Church off-off-Broadway in Manhattan. Theatre impresario Joseph Papp saw the play and was so impressed that he moved the production to off-Broadway at The Public Theater, and eventually to Broadway at Vivian Beaumont Theater. The play was nominated for six Tony Awards. It won the New York Critics Circle Award and an OBIE Award for the "Best Play of the Year". The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and been performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 10 male

What people say:

"An authentic, powerful theatrical piece that tells you more about the anti-universe of prison life than any play outside the work of Jean Genet." — Newsweek

"Mr. Piñero writes very well indeed. His dialogue sizzles with truth." — The New York Times

About the Playwright:

Miguel Piñero (1946-1988) was a playwright, actor and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was a leading member of the Nuyorican literary movement. Once a burglar, mugger, shoplifter, and drug addict, began writing when serving a five-year sentence in Sing Sing for armed robbery. He was discovered and encouraged by Marvin Felix Camillo, who conducted a drama workshop at the prison. Camillo's workshop grew into an acting company of ex-convicts called The Family, members of which made up most of the cast in Joseph Papp's premiere production of Short Eyes in 1974.