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The Time of Your Life
The Time of Your Life
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Author: William Saroyan Publisher: Samuel French Format: Softcover # of Pages: 112 Pub. Date: 2009 ISBN-10: 0573616736 ISBN-13: 9780573616730 Cast Size: 7 women, 18 men
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About
the Play:
Winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for
Drama and the 1939 Drama Critics' Circle Award
The Time of Your Life is a full-length drama by William
Saroyan. A group of wistful
dreamers, pining lonely hearts, and beer-hall-philosophers inhabit a
dive bar in San Francisco, developing friendships and romances. A
rich tapestry of human life, The Time of Your Life
is a twentieth century American masterpiece.
The Time of Your Life is set in
a 1939 San Francisco where the shadow of the newly-built Golden Gate
Bridge and impending war darken the door of a run-down bar,
optimistically named 'Nick's Pacific Street Saloon, Restaurant and
Entertainment Palace.' The bar is filled with characters from all
walks of life, each of whom has a dream and a hope for how they might
capture it. Central to the play is the figure of Joe, a wealthy
gentleman who sits at the same table every day, drinks champagne, and
makes curious enquiries of the various figures who enter the bar.
Some, like a talented piano player and an enthusiastic comedian, are
given a chance to show off their talents. Some, like eccentric
old-timer Kit Carson and faded beauty Kitty Duval, seek attention and
perhaps answers. Joe acts as a central focus for the play's
characters, who are shown kindness and an opportunity to discover
whether their dreams are really within their grasp. The Time of
Your Life presents a slice of
American life that is filled with hope and heartache that is as
palpable today as it was when the play premiered.
The Time of Your Life opened in 1939 at the Booth Theatre
in New York City. After becoming the first play to win both the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama and New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for
Best American Play, it spawned
three Broadway
revivals, a successful 1948 film adaptation, and has enjoyed enduring
international popularity, including a star-studded
Royal Shakespeare Company production in Stratford and London in 1983.
The play has become a
favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is
regularly performed in regional repertory, high school, college, and
community theatre productions.
Cast: 7 women, 18 men
What people say:
"One of the most enchanting
theatrical works imaginable." — New York Herald
Tribune
"Gleeful, heartbreaking,
tender and hilarious, probing and elusive." — New
York Post
"A remarkable play which
blazes forth like a brave beacon: warming and full of fire."
— The Daily Mail
"The Time of Your Life
... you'll be held and moved by Saroyan's unique view of the world
... It's a play and an author worth rediscovering." — The
Daily Mail
About the Playwright:
William Saroyan (1908-1981) was an internationally renowned
American writer, playwright, and humanitarian. He achieved great
popularity in the thirties, forties, and fifties through his hundreds
of short stories, plays, novels, memoirs, and essays. In 1939,
William Saroyan was the first American writer to win both the
New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his
play The Time of Your Life. He famously refused to accept the
Pulitzer Prize on the grounds that "Commerce should not
patronize art."
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Stella Adler, edited by Barry Paris
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