About the Play:

The Love Talker is a long one-act drama by Deborah Pryor. A supernatural thriller about witchery in the mountains of Virginia. This eerie, sensual ghost story tells the tale of two orphaned sisters who live together in a remote cabin in the woods, where they dig for potatoes and wage a private war against oppressive forest forces: an impish, red-headed witch and a lustful demon, The Love Talker.

The Love Talker is an eerie and sensual play – set in an age when strange spirits walked the earth and magic was all around – which seems to have emanated from the darkest reaches of the Grimms' fairy tales. Fourteen-year-old Gowdie and her older sister, Bun, live alone in a house surrounded by dark and mysterious woods. One day, when she was supposed to have been out harvesting potatoes, the adolescent Gowdie falls under the charms of a seductive witch-boy, the Love Talker, and a companion spirit, the Red Head. Bun, realizing Gowdie is under the spirit's influence, sets magic charms about the house for protection. But Gowdie is completely enamoured of the Love Talker and resists Bun's efforts. Bun tries to tell Gowdie that their mother fell prey to the same spirit, which seduced her and caused her death, but Gowdie refuses to listen. Instead she breaks Bun's charms and calls the Love Talker into their home. Bun runs from the house and spends the night hiding under a quilt in the yard. In the morning, however, she spies the Red Head, catches her and forces her to divulge the Love Talker's true name, which Bun can use in a spell to drive him away. Bun ties Gowdie up, then goes out into the woods to wait for the Love Talker. Meanwhile, the Red Head unties Gowdie and makes her believe that Bun wants the Love Talker for herself. When the Love Talker appears Bun finds she is unable to complete the spell, and instead, kisses him. Horrified, she runs home and replaces her charms. But Gowdie, under the Red Head's influence, kills Bun, and the Love Talker appears in the doorway, having claimed another member of the family.

The Love Talker premiered in 1987 at the famed Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the annual Festival of New American Plays, an influential showplace for playwrights. Subsequently produced in 1988 at the Hudson Guild Theater off-Broadway in New York City. The play has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 1 male

What people say:

"Deborah Pryor's tale of witchery in the mountains of Virginia, is overgrown with apparitions... An entangled exercise in mysticism." — New York Times

"The Love Talker makes its force felt obliquely, and the devastation of its last moments comes not in words but in a horrible, gorgeous, final tableau." — Orlando Sentinel

About the Playwright:

Deborah Pryor is an American playwright. Her plays have been produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Arena Stage Theatre, the Hudson Guild Theatre, the Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival for New Plays, and the Virginia Stage Company. She received an M.F.A. in Playwriting from the University of Iowa.