About the Play:

Winner of the 1981 National Student Playwriting Award

The Cashier is a full-length comedy by Glen Merzer. The offbeat comedy follows the exploits of a frustrated artist, a New Yorker, transplanted in Bakersfield, California, attempting to take a break from his big city life and wedding preparations with his fiancée to concentrate on his art. Taking a temporary job with the IRS, he meets a colourful collection of mail room employees and begins to question his artistic talent, his love, and his future.

The Cashier centers around young Ralf Leland, an aspiring artist who moves to California to spend a summer painting before marrying his fiancée Dale, who is from New York. To support himself, Ralf gets a summer job as a mail clerk for the Internal Revenue Service. As the summer continues, Ralf grows fond of his co workers there: Emily, a Zen enthusiast; Melba, a born again believer; Frank, a practical joker; and Mr. Thompson, a failed poet. Ralf, who never had a family, comes to feel a sense of family at his work. He also becomes intrigued by the blind cashier in the cafeteria of his office building. Meanwhile, Ralf's paintings are failures. Dale's career as a nightclub singer, by contrast, progresses admirably, as Ralf learns in phone conversations that grow increasingly distant. After Mr. Thompson confides in Ralf about his failed poetry, Ralf decides for himself that he not an artist after all, and is content to be a mail clerk.

The Cashier premiered in 1981 at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. It then toured to The American College Theatre Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in 1982, winning the National Student Playwriting Award. Since then it has been performed in regional, high school, and college theatre productions.

Cast: 8 female, 7 male

About the Playwright:

Glen Merzer is an American playwright, screenwriter, and author. He grew up in Bellmore, New York, and was educated at New College of Florida, Indiana University, and Boston University. His first full-length play The Cashier won for him the 1981 National Student Playwriting Award at the American College Theatre Festival.