About the Play:

The Heart Outright is a full-length drama by Mark Medoff. The author's second consecutive Off-Broadway hit, this brightly inventive comedy blends verbal eloquence and needle-sharp characterizations in its often biting examination of the antics of four graduate students. Uniquely constructed, The Heart Outright is comprised of two related acts, either of which can be presented effectively by itself.

The Heart Outright is a sequel to this author's renowned success When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? In the first act, subtitled The Dirty Picture Man, Stephen (Red) Ryder, the reluctant nineteen-year-old hero of the original play, is now a twenty-seven-year-old Vietnam veteran who has lost a hand in the war. Part owner and manager of a movie house in Austin, Texas, which has recently begun to show porno films, he recounts, in an engrossing and revealing monologue, the events of his present life – his numbing, sometimes disquieting duties as concessionaire and general factotum in the cinema; his involvement with a local religious cult; and the still lingering doubts about his manhood which have remained with him ever since, eight years earlier, he had found himself thrust, almost accidentally, into the role of a hero. The second act, subtitled Terminal, takes place four years later, when Stephen returns to his former home in New Mexico to attend his mother's funeral. There he encounters people from his past: his former sweetheart, Angel, once a waitress in the diner where the events of the first play took place; his avaricious, brutal stepfather, Ray, who tries to browbeat him into signing over half of his late mother's property; and a former high school classmate, Dickie, now the night manager of the local bus terminal, who still carries around a newspaper account of Stephen's bravery and secretly wants to challenge him. In the ensuing confrontations, each of these characters reveals more about himself, or herself, than each might have wished, but each in his own way also comes to terms with what he or she has become in the years since the fateful night of terror when the legend of Stephen "Red" Ryder first came into being.

The Heart Outright premiered in 1986 at the New Mexico Repertory Theatre in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The West Coast premiere was in 1987 at the Bowery Theatre in San Diego, California, and the New York premiere in 1989 off-Broadway at the Theatre for the New City. The play has been performed in regional repertory and college theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Like the original play, the sequel is a psychological melodrama in which Stephen's fighting spirit is severely tested and found wanting." — The New York Times

"…constantly engrossing … Medoff gives their dialogue an idiosyncratic eloquence." — BackStage

About the Playwright:

Mark Medoff (1940-2019) was an American playwright, screenwriter, film and theatre director, actor, and professor. He wrote 30 plays and wrote, produced or directed 19 movies. He found his greatest success with his play Children of a Lesser God, which received both the Tony Award and the Olivier Award, as well as Outer Critics and Drama Desk awards. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the film script of Children of a Lesser God and a Cable ACE award for his HBO premiere movie Apology. He received OBIE, Outer Critics and Drama Desk awards for When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?. He was Dramatist in Residence and Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts at New Mexico State University, where he served on the English and Theatre Arts faculties for twenty-seven years.