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Slow Dance on the Killing Ground
Slow Dance on the Killing Ground
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Author: William Hanley Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Format: Softcover # of Pages: 74 Pub. Date: 1965 ISBN-10: 0822210436 ISBN-13: 9780822210436 Cast Size: 1 female, 2 male
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About
the Play:
Slow Dance on the Killing Ground has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.
Slow Dance on the Killing Ground is a full-length drama by
William Hanley. What will happen when an anxious young black
man, an old German immigrant, and a pregnant, white teenager are
thrown together on a strange, dark, fateful night in Brooklyn? They
confess their innermost secrets to each other regarding racism,
murder, family loyalty, and personal worth. The Broadway debut hailed
by critics as a work of extraordinary power and compassion.
Slow Dance on the Killing Ground takes place in the early
sixties, where three extremely different people are brought together
in a rundown candy store in a desolate factory district in Brooklyn:
a victim of the German concentration camps, a pregnant girl, and a
streetwise juvenile delinquent. As the curtain rises, a poor, dusty
shop with its dirty window obscuring the dark hostile night, with its
mean little counter, and with its juke box glaring vulgarly from the
side, the storekeeper is taking inventory. The door is flung open,
letting in a lithe young black man, weirdly gotten up in a soft,
high-crowned hat, sunglasses, a cape, short slacks and sneakers. In
this "slow dance" for two, the characters make hesitant
approaches, circle, feint, threaten each other with gun and ice pick
but scarcely make contact. The young man is obviously a hunted man.
Through the circumlocutions of his odd mixture of fast-talking and
fancy literary allusions, there pants a sense of terror. The
storekeeper is a non-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, is
close-mouthed, suspicious, anxious to avoid self-involvement. The
third "slow dancer" is Rosie, an eighteen-year-old from Riverdale, sho has
wandered into the shop after losing her way while looking for the
address of an abortionist. They are the playwright's troika of sadness,
three people who each see the world outside the little shop as a
"killing ground," for entirely different reasons. Rosie has
no illusions about her homeliness or about the encounter that has led
to her troubles. The laconic German and the flowery young man react
to her with a sensitivity and concern that seem to diminish the
furies within them. But not for long. Finally the German is driven to
revealing the truth about himself as the young man, at last, faces
his inexorable fate out there on the "killing ground."
Slow Dance on the Killing Ground premiered in 1964 at Plymouth
Theatre on Broadway, starring a pre-"Mod Squad" Clarence
Williams III. This Tony-nominated play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and
has been
performed in regional and
college
theatre productions.
Cast: 1 female, 2 male
What people say:
"…the most original serious
play we have had in our theatre in a long time." — New
York Daily News
"…an event of forceful and
steady arresting dramatic interest." — New York Post
"Mr. Hanley writes with
richness of imagination and with penetration into the heart. He
brings humor, tenderness and understanding into the theater, lighting
it up with the ardor of his vision." — New York
Times
"Mr. Hanley writes with
richness of imagination and with penetration into the heart. He
brings humor, tenderness and understanding into the theater, lighting
it up with the ardor of his vision." — New York
Times
About the Playwright:
William Hanley (1931-2012) was an American playwright and
screenwriter. He won critical acclaim as a Broadway and Off Broadway
playwright in the 1960s. He turned to television and went on to write
more than two dozen television made-for-TV movies and miniseries over
the next 30 years, receiving six Emmy nominations and winning two
Primetime Emmy Awards during his career. He was educated at Cornell
University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, though he never
pursued an acting career. He is the author of a number of novels and
television, radio, and stage plays including Slow Dance on the
Killing Ground.
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