About the Play:

Where We're Born has become a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues, Female/Female Scenes and Female/Male Scenes.

Where We're Born is a full-length drama by Lucy Thurber. Small-town America, class distinctions, sexual politics, and love. A college freshman away on scholarship, Lilly returns to her rural hometown on her first break and wreaks havoc with her family and friends when she discovers that the place she comes from is no longer a place she belongs. Bold and explosive, Where We're Born explores why it is we can never return home.

Where We're Born focuses on a young woman on scholarship at a prestigious liberal arts school who returns to her small-town home. When Lilly, a college freshman, arrives home for fall break, there's something ominous in the air. Though recognizably changed, Lilly slips easily back into her old pattern of life with her beloved cousin Tony, who functions as her combination father, brother, and best friend. Tony and his buddies eye her with a mixture of pride and resentment for having gotten out of their dead-end existence and act accordingly. But, after a year of college, she finds herself alienated from her old crowd of hard-partying friends and struggles to accept the violence, prejudice, and infidelity that characterize her home town. She gets caught in a lust entanglement with her cousin and his long-time girlfriend Franky. Bingeing, fighting, and seduction follow Lilly's attempt to bring her new world and her old world together. Where We're Born explores the fact that sometimes in order to leave your home you have to destroy it.

Where We're Born premiered in 2003 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater off Broadway in New York City. Since then the play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Lucy Thurber succeeds in this play, particularly in the ways many so-called emerging playwrights disappoint. Her dialogue is thoroughly believable, her scenes are well-composed and she has something meaningful to say." — CurtainUp

"Thurber's play is an aching, truthful portrait of small-town volatility." — Time Out Chicago

"Where We're Born is set in a familiar state. It's any Hometown, USA. Childhood chums destined to live a lifetime in repetitive motion. It's a heartbreaking story of the one who got away. Where We're Born is an unforgettable poignant dramedy." — Chicago Theater Beat

About the Playwright:

Lucy Thurber is an award winning American playwright based in New York City. She is the recipient of Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship, the first Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting, a proud recipient of a Lilly Award, an OBIE Award for The Hill Town Plays cycle, and The Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwriting Award. She has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Sarah Lawrence College.