About the Play:

The Women of Lockerbie has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Male/Male Scenes.

The Women of Lockerbie is a full-length poetic drama by Deborah Brevoort. An American woman whose son died in the crash of Pan Am Flight 103 discovers a group of Scottish women who are trying to collect the victims' clothing, which had been scattered across the hills of Lockerbie, Scotland. Their plan is to wash and return 11,000 items of clothing to the victims' families as a symbolic gesture, but they find resistance from a U.S. official. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

The Women of Lockerbie is a dramatization of life in the aftermath of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded in midair as it travelled from London to New York City. The explosion scattered pieces of the plane over 850 square miles of Lockerbie, Scotland, as well as the remains of the 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Twenty-one houses on the ground were destroyed, and 11 people there also lost their lives. The Women of Lockerbie is loosely inspired by events following the infamous 1988 terrorist attack, although the characters and situations in the play are purely fictional. A mother from New Jersey roams the hills of Lockerbie, looking for her son's remains. There she meets the women of Lockerbie who are fighting the U.S. Government to obtain 11,000 pieces of clothing found in the plane's wreckage. Determined to convert an act of hatred into an act of love, the women want to wash the clothes of the dead and return them to the bereaved families. Written in the structure of a Greek tragedy, it is a poetic drama about the triumph of love over hate.

The Women of Lockerbie premiered to great reviews in 2003 Off-Broadway in the Theatre at St. Clement's Episcopal Church by the New Group and the Women's Project. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions and is translated into 9 languages.

Cast: 5 female, 2 male

What people say:

"A stunning display of raw emotion, a powerhouse drama, a masterful and cathartic experience." — Variety

"A moving, thoughtful exploration of how grief changes over time." — The New Yorker

"…catches the grim mood [of a terrorist attack] better than anything I've yet seen on the subject of 9/11 and its aftermath. In its tightly controlled depiction of collective sorrow…it becomes almost unbearably moving." — Daily Telegraph (London)

"Playwright Deborah Brevoort has a gift for high poetry and her descriptions of the day when death came raining down on Scotland are impressively moving…endowed with character, poetry and a core of touching emotion…." — Time Out London

"…gives powerful voice to a disturbingly contemporary anguish: how to respond to suffer-ing caused by a terrorist attack…the play has the power to move an audience to new hope in a world witnessing continual acts of revenge and hatred." — Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

"This finely honed play has the formal beauty of a Greek tragedy. The result is a play where not a minute is wasted in verbiage – where you are gripped from the opening moment and not released until the end." — Green Left Weekly (Australia)

About the Playwright:

Deborah Brevoort is an American playwright and librettist from Alaska who now lives in the New York City area. She is the author of numerous plays, musicals and operas, including The Women of Lockerbie, which won the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Contest and is being produced all over the world.