About the Play:

Still Life has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

Still Life is a full-length drama by Emily Mann. The pains of readjustment are sharply rendered in Still Life, which tells the painful story of Mark, a former Marine, his estranged wife Cheryl and his mistress Nadine – all doing what they can to survive the dark and disturbing memories which plague him; flashbacks which often cause Mark to lash out in anger.

Still Life explores the aftermath of the Vietnam War, which officially ended in 1975, and its lasting influence on three mid-western Americans. The script provides unflinching portraits of: Mark, a troubled ex-Marine suffering a difficult adjustment to civilian life; his estranged wife, Cheryl, her second child on the way, struggles to keep her family together in spite of Mark's violent outbursts; and another woman Nadine, who has left her drunkard husband and attached herself to the Marine vet whom she admires and convinces herself she perhaps loves. Seated at a table, each one confesses to a single listener (the audience) their various stories. Mark confesses that, having lost his only friend to a land mine, he killed a Vietnamese family in cold blood and, carrying the seeds of violence with him, returned home to brutalize his pregnant wife physically and emotionally. Cheryl, disillusioned and unhappy, wants to ignore the terrors that haunt her husband, believing that in time the awful memories will fade, while Nadine, an early feminist mother of three, blames Mark's destructiveness on the forces that conditioned him before he went to Vietnam. In the end, these three become a metaphor for the nation as a whole – still trying to understand, and overcome, the lingering trauma that is the bitter legacy of war. Gleaned from interviews and refined to illuminate the post war experience, Still Life remains a layered masterpiece and potent interrogation of love, family, home and war as seen through the intertwined lens of a Combat Veteran, his wife, and his mistress.

Still Life premiered in 1980 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago before transferring to New York at off-Broadway's WP Theater where it won the OBIE Award for Best off-Broadway Play. It premiered in the UK in 1984 at the Traverse Theater during the Edinburgh Festival and won the Fringe First Award, then moved to London's West End at the Donmar Warehouse and finally, to River Studios in London. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 1 male

What people say:

"…a theatrical experience that is often shattering." — The Hollywood Reporter

"…a gripping drama, strikingly and effectively staged, compelling and moving." — Chicago Sun-Times

"…a searing account of the lingering aftermath of the Vietnam War." — The New York Times

About the Playwright:

Emily Mann is is an American playwright and director, who is also artistic director and playwright-in-residence at the McCarter Theatre in in Princeton, New Jersey. Her award-winning plays have been produced throughout the world. Her numerous awards for artistic excellence include a Guggenheim, a Playwrights Fellowship and Artistic Associate Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Rosamund Gilder Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Theatre. In recognition of her achievements illuminating the possibilities for social, cultural and political change, she was awarded the Lee Reynolds Award.