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The Value of Names
The Value of Names
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Biz Staff Pick!
Author: Jeffrey Sweet Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 55 Pub. Date: 1997 Edition: Acting ISBN-10: 0822216442 ISBN-13: 9780822216445 Cast Size: 1 female, 2 male
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About
the Play:
The
Value of Names has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues, Female/Male Scenes, and Male/Male Scenes (particularly suitable for those over 40 years old).
The
Value of Names is a full-length comedic drama by Jeffrey
Sweet. An actor's career fell apart when he was named by his best
friend, a director, on the 1950s Hollywood Blacklist. Now, his
actress daughter is offered a starring role by the former best friend
and the two men confront each other – face-to-face. The play
examines not only the value of names – she wants to drop the famous
one of her "named" father – but that of friendship, and
of art.
The
Value of Names
involves two former friends who never could quite bury the hatchet.
Their long-standing grudge revolves around events occurring during
the Red Scare of the 1950s. Some two hundred screenwriters,
actors and others in the entertainment industry were victims of
blacklisting and denied employment for Communist political beliefs or
associations, both real and suspected. Benny Silverman was an
up
and coming
comedic actor whose name his best friend Leo Gershen, a film and
stage director, named to the House Un-American
Activities Committee to save his career, thereby putting a temporary
halt to Benny's blossoming stardom. They never spoke again, and Benny
went out of his way to avoid seeing anything Leo directed. Though
Benny eventually revived his career starring in a long-running TV
sitcom
after many years of forced inactivity, he never forgave his former
best friend for his actions. Now his daughter, Norma, a rising young
actress, has been cast in a play directed by Leo. Adding further
insult, Leo is advising Norma to change her professional name to blur
the family connection. Naturally, Benny is not happy about the
proposed name change and must deal again with a moral crisis that he
has tried to put behind him. At his daughter's urging he meets with
Leo, a confrontation in which initial reserve gradually gives way to
a provocative and increasingly passionate exchange of ideas and
convictions until Benny, rising to the occasion with biting,
devastating wit, lays to rest the sense of outrage and injustice that
has preyed on his conscience for so many bitter years. The
Value of Names
is an absorbing and brilliantly executed play concerned with the
lasting effects of the infamous Hollywood blacklist whose continued
relevance makes it a frequently produced play today. The
Value of Names premiered
in 1983 at
the famed Actors Theatre of Louisville and was nationally acclaimed
as part of the Festival of New American Plays, an influential showplace for playwrights.
It opened
later that year at the Victory Gardens Theatre Chicago and had its
New York premiere in 1989 off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre. His
most-produced play, it has become a favourite scene study vehicle in
acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional,
college, and community theatre productions.
Cast:
1 female, 2 male
What
people say:
"The
Value of Names has it all: a provocative subject, superb
writing, a consistently engrossing story, and an almost overwhelming
emotional wallop at its end. A wonderful play." — Chicago
Tribune
"A
star vehicle as engaging as it is thematically pointed, Jeffrey
Sweet's The Value of Names has the
kind of dream roles that have attracted name performers ever since it
was first mounted in 1983." — Los Angeles Times
"…demonstrates
that the drama of ideas can be the most exalted of blood sports."
— Time Magazine
"…almost
perfect." — Variety
"Playwright
Jeffrey Sweet has constructed an entertaining
and though-provoking work with The Value of Names.
This brief (75 minutes) look at two men and the different paths their
lives have taken since one named names during the Senator McCarthy
red hunt trials of the 1950's. Filled with a surprisingly amount of
humor, though mostly caustic and self-deprecating in tone, this is an
interesting look at the fallout from that dark period in our
country's history." — Broadway World
About
the Playwright:
Jeffrey
Sweet is an American writer, journalist, theatre historian, and
teacher. He divides his time between New York and Chicago, where he
has been constant presence since the beginning of that city's
theatrical renaissance in the 1970s. His plays have been presented
off-Broadway, internationally, and in a variety of regional and
developmental theatres. A popular teacher and author of many
newspaper and magazine articles, he currently teaches at Wagner
College, and has taught or guest lectured at dozens of universities
and professional schools.
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