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The Value of Names

The Value of Names
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
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

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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