About the Play:

The Sweetest Swing in Baseball has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

The Sweetest Swing in Baseball is a full-length drama by Rebecca Gilman. Dana was the toast of the art world – a hot property. After her latest exhibition bombs, she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. It might be the safest place for her but her insurance will only pay for ten days. She attempts to outplay the health care system by assuming the identity of American baseball star Darryl Strawberry to prolong her stay and get medical coverage.

The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, a clever, serio-comic play, explores the pitfalls of celebrity, self-expectations, and mental illness by introducing the audience to talented artist Dana Fielding whose latest exhibit has been panned by art critics. Her paranoia and depression after the bad reviews send her boyfriend packing. Her self-worth at rock bottom, she attempts suicide and lands in a mental ward where she finds she enjoys the structure of her days. When she learns her insurance won't cover more than a 10-day stay, she and two fellow patients devise a plan to extend her hospital stay by convincing doctors that she believes she is Darryl Strawberry, the legendary 6'6" African-American Major League baseball outfielder, and develops empathy for the former slugger who lost his zeal for the game – he had the "sweetest swing in baseball".

The Sweetest Swing in Baseball premiered in 2004 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US and has been mounted by college theatres.

Cast: 3 female, 2 male (with doubling).

What people say:

"When Dana chats with fellow patients Michael, an alcoholic, and Gary, a stalker, the dialogue here is hilarious as Dana instructs a would-be killer on drawing negative space and the two men coach her on Strawberry's stats." — The Boston Herald

"Rebecca Gilman's The Sweetest Swing In Baseball Gets a Home Run." — www.talkinbroadway.com

"A highly intelligent play… a robustness in Gilman's satirical humour." — Independent

"Resonates with ideas about art, identity and being who you want to be." — Sunday Express

"[Gilman is] dealing with how we define one another, measure success and failure, raise celebrities up and tear them down, and create different personas to cope with all the craziness of having a public identity. The parallels the playwright draws between the artist and baseball player are always smart and amusing. You might be tempted to leave the theater chanting 'Gil-man! Gil-man!'" — Boston Globe

About the Playwright:

Rebecca Gilman is an American playwright who received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Iowa in 1991. She is the first American playwright to win an Evening Standard Award for The Glory of Living (seen in the UK at the Royal Court Theatre), which also won the George Devine Award, was named one of Time magazine's Best Plays of the Decade, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been produced in the US at such venues as the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York, the Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Manhattan Class Company, in the UK at the Royal Court Theatre, as well as other theatres internationally. A native of Alabama, she was awarded the 2008 Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Most Distinguished Writer of the Year.