About the Play:

Six Degrees of Separation has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

Six Degrees of Separation is a full-length comedy by John Guare. A group of wealthy New Yorkers are taken in by a conman who claims to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier in this this soaring and deeply provocative tragicomedy of race, class and manners, which is based on a real-life incident. No subject is left untouched in this comic, fast-paced and affecting piece. The title refers to a statistical theory which states that any two people in the world can be connected through only six other people. Six Degrees of Separation is an examination of the threads of chance that link one person to another.

Six Degrees of Separation is inspired by a true story. The play follows the trail of a young black con man, Paul, who insinuates himself into the lives of a wealthy New York couple, Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, claiming he knows their son at college. Paul tells them he is the son of actor Sidney Poitier, and that he has just been mugged and all his money is gone. Captivated by Paul's intelligence and his fascinating conversation (and the possibility of appearing in a new Sidney Poitier movie), the Kittredges invite him to stay overnight. But in the morning they discover him in bed with a young male hustler from the streets, and the picture begins to change. After kicking him out, Ouisa and Flan discover that friends of theirs have had a similar run-in with the brash con artist. Intrigued, they turn detective and piece together the connections that gave Paul access to their lives. Meanwhile, Paul's cons unexpectedly lead him into darker territory and his lies begin to catch up with him. As the final events of the play unfold Ouisa suddenly finds herself caring for Paul, feeling that he gave them far more than he took and that her once idyllic life was not what it seemed to be. Six Degrees of Separation is one of those rare works that capture both the supercharged pulse of our present era and the deepest and most mysterious movements of the human heart.

Six Degrees of Separation opened in New York City in 1990 and was an immediate critical and popular success. Outstanding reviews and full houses greatly extended the play's original ten-week run. John Guare's play won the New York Critic Circle Award for Best Play of the Year and London's Olivier award, and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for a Tony Award. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in repertory and community theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 13 male

What people say:

"Transcendent...magical...a masterwork that captures new York as Tom Wolfe did in Bonfire of the Vanities...[An] extraordinary high comedy in which broken connections, mistaken identities, and tragic social, familial, and cultural schisms...create a hilarious and finally searing panorama of urban America in precisely our time... Among the many remarkable aspects of Mr. Guare's writing is the seamlessness of his imagery, characters and themes, as if this play had erupted from his own imagination in one perfect piece." — New York Times

"Six Degrees of Separation is the best American play of the past several seasons, and will do hot business wherever it goes." — Variety

"…cunningly executed, seemingly seamlessly joined, interlarded with clever one-liners, alternating comic situations with mildly disturbing ones … Six Degrees of Separation is a play about everything, with something in it for everyone…." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

John Guare is an American playwright. He received the Obie, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and Tony nominations for House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, which also won the Olivier Award for Best Play. He won a Tony for his libretto to Two Gentlemen of Verona, which also won the Tony as Best Musical of 1972. His screenplay for Louis Malle's Atlantic City earned him an Oscar nomination.