About the Play:

Tribute has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, Female/Male Scenes, and Male/Male Scenes.

Tribute is a full-length dramatic comedy by Bernard Slade. The play is about an aging showbiz hustler who learns he's dying and receives a visit from the son he abandoned years ago. The son learns to loosen up and love the father who might not have always been there for him, but is beloved by everyone in the theatre district. Tribute is a heart-warming comedy about family love and forgiveness.

Tribute focuses on Scottie Templeton, a charming, irresponsible fellow who has spent his life shirking responsibility. A one-time scriptwriter and film producer who ends up working as a Broadway public relations man, he's everyone's friend, nobody's hero and a great womanizer who's managed to live over fifty years without taking anything seriously including love, marriage, and parenting. Life's been one continuous gag. But at fifty-one, he finds the script's been rewritten as a tragedy: he is diagnosed as having terminal cancer and only three months to live. Scottie attempts a reconciliation with his son, Jud, whom he hasn't seen for years since divorcing the boy's mother and moving to New York from the west coast. Jud, alienated by years of neglect, comes to visit. Scottie's one concern is to make friends with his son, for everyone else adores wise-cracking Scottie including his compassionate ex-wife Maggie, his oldest friend and boss Lou, and his doctor and dear friend Gladys. After a bitter, revealing confrontation, father and son are reconciled. And it is Jud who gets Scottie to agree to be rehospitalized for treatment and then organizes a giant birthday roast – a tribute – to his father in a theatre.

Tribute premiered in 1978 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre and ran for over 200 performances on Broadway following pre-Broadway runs in Boston at the Colonial Theatre, and Toronto at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and continues to thrive at regional and community theatres.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male

What people say:

"It's a gem of a play, nicely balancing comedy with tragedy and leaving the audience feeling both good and sad at the end." — The Davis Enterprise

"Tribute is an authentic, touching and funny story about friends and family that comes in all different shapes and sizes, and a fantastic tribute to the roller coaster ride of life." — Scarborough Mirror

"Very funny, and at the same time a touching work." — WABC TV

"Slade can blend comedy and pathos skillfully.... He can also slice cleanly into truth." — Wall Street Journal

About the Author:

Bernard Slade Newbound (1930-2019), known professionally as Bernard Slade, was a Canadian playwright and long-time Hollywood TV-sitcom writer. He began his career as an actor performing in over 200 plays on stage, radio and television in regional theatres around Toronto and on camera for the CBC. He moved to Hollywood in the mid-1960s, and was soon writing episodes of such classics-to-be as Bewitched. Credited as creator, writer, story editor and producer of eight series, including The Flying Nun and The Partridge Family, he was considered one of the true heavyweights in Hollywood. By the mid-1970s, he turned his comedic genius to the stage writing more than a dozen plays, including three Broadway hit shows like his phenomenally successful Same Time Next Year, Tribute and Romantic Comedy, which were all turned into Hollywood features.