About the Play:

The Waiting Room has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

The Waiting Room is a full-length comedic drama by Lisa Loomer. What do a fading Jersey party girl, a Victorian doctor's wife and a feudal Chinese bride have in common? Find out as they meet in that great "equalizer," a doctor's reception area. The Waiting Room is a dark comedy about corporate health care, medical ethics, sexual politics, and the ideal of woman's beauty through the ages and across cultures.

The Waiting Room is a dark comedy about the timeless quest for beauty – and its cost. Three women from different centuries (18th-Century China, 19th-Century Victorian England, and present-day New Jersey) all meet in a modern doctor's waiting room to see the same doctor for different ailments. Forgiveness From Heaven is an eighteenth-century Chinese woman whose bound feet are causing her to lose her toes. Victoria is a nineteenth-century tightly corseted English woman suffering from what is commonly known as "hysteria." Then there is Wanda, a modern gal from New Jersey who is having problems with her silicone breasts. Husbands, doctors, Freud, the drug industry and the FDA all come under examination as they struggle for answers. The Waiting Room is a wild ride through medical and sexual politics, including the politics of the ever-present battle with breast cancer.

The Waiting Room premiered in 1994 to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and went on to highly successful productions at Trinity Rep and Arena Stage in 1995, and then to the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 1996. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and been widely produced nationally in the US and internationally.

Cast: 4 female, 7 male

What people say:

"The Waiting Room … is a bold, risky melange of conflicting elements that is … terrifically moving … There's no resisting the fierce emotional pull of the play." — New York Times

"Lisa Loomer's funny-sad The Waiting Room sounds like a feminist polemic but plays like first-rate comedy and drama … it's now one of the high points of this year's Off-Broadway season … Loomer's writing is never pedantic and always lively … The Waiting Room is well worth a visit.." — BackStage

" The Waiting Room is also one of the most adventurous productions to open Off-Broadway (or on) so far this season … The Waiting Room invigorates as it astonishes. How did Ms. Loomer … ever come up with a piece that's so crazy, so brutal, so logical and so satisfying? For that matter, when was the last time any play moved you enough to ask that question?." — New York Times

About the Playwright:

Lisa Loomer is an American playwright and screenwriter of Spanish and Romanian ancestry who has also worked as an actress and stand-up comic. She is best known for her plays The Waiting Room and Living Out, which are taught in university drama programs, Women's Studies programs, and Latino Studies programs. She was twice nominated for a Pulitzer and also has received an Imagen Award for positive portrayals of Latinos in all media.