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The House of Blue Leaves
The House of Blue Leaves
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Author: John Guare Publisher: Samuel French (cover image may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 79 Pub. Date: 1971 Edition: Revised ISBN-10: 0573610282 ISBN-13: 9780573610288 Cast Size: 6 female, 4 male
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About
the Play:
The House of Blue Leaves has long been a favourite of acting
teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.
The House of Blue Leaves is a full-length dramatic comedy
by John Guare. On the day that the Pope visits New York and
masses of people line the streets in adulation, Artie, a zookeeper
living in Sunnyside, Queens, thinks its time for his life to be
blessed, too. He desperately wants to escape his lower middle-class
existence and become a popular singer and songwriter, but his life is
complicated by an ambitious mistress, a crazy wife and a bomb-making
son.
The House of Blue Leaves is set in 1965, on the day Pope
Paul VI visited New York City to plead for an end to the Vietnam War.
Zookeeper Artie Shaugnessy is aspiring songwriter whose enthusiasm far
outdistances his talent. He plans to relocate to L.A. and call upon a
movie-producer friend to help launch his showbiz career. Tagging
along on Artie's coattails is his opportunistic downstairs mistress,
Bunny, who will do anything to get what she wants, including helping
Artie banish his mentally unbalanced wife, Bananas, to the funny
farm. Meanwhile, Artie's embittered GI son Ronnie goes AWOL from Fort
Dix stowing a home made-bomb intended to blow up the Pope in Yankee
Stadium. Also arriving are Artie's old school chum, now a successful
Hollywood producer, Billy Einhorn with starlet girlfriend in tow, who
holds the key to Artie's dreams of getting out of Queens and away
from the life he so despises. But like many dreams, this promise of
glory evaporates amid the chaos of ordinary lives. The House of
Blue Leaves is a heartbreakingly human comedy with very unique
characters that has a tour de force monologue for a 20-something male
actor. Given by the character Ronnie Shaughnessy, the monologue is
about him wanting to be a bride. It expresses his yearning for love
and to be special, to have all eyes on him. It's hilarious and
surprisingly touching.
The House of Blue Leaves was first staged in 1966 at the
Eugene O'Neil Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. It premiered
Off-Broadway in 1971 at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre, and won the
Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play and the Obie Award
for Best American Play. It was revived in 1986, both Off-Broadway and
on Broadway, and was again revived on Broadway in 2011. The
play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and
workshops and is regularly performed in regional, high school,
college, and community theatre productions.
Cast: 6 female, 4 male
What people say:
"A brilliant play ...
beautifully fashioned ... Wacky and sometimes sad [with]... combined
hilarity, poignancy, outrageous stage aside and tragedy." —
New York Daily News
"Enchantingly zany and
original farce." — New York Times
"This compelling 1971
tragicomedy remains the finest accomplishment from playwright John
Guare.... This alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching work
powerfully explores the crass values that sometimes shape our hopes
and dreams, and the futility of trying to fulfill them." —
Backstage
"Guare's story tackles the
thorny issues of vanity, ego self-deception, celebrity glorification
and other personal and societal dysfunctions. Along the way, Guare
steers us from sitcomland to Pinteresque bleakness, slapstick and
farce…." — The Orange County Register
About the Playwright:
John Guare is an American playwright. He received the Obie,
the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and Tony nominations for The
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.
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