A State of Innocence
This play is included in the collection:
Play Description
A STATE OF INNOCENCE is set in Rafah, Palestine, and features a Palestinian woman, an Israeli architect, and an Israeli soldier.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Short Drama (about 30 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Real political theater as I understand it: challenging, disorienting, and thought provoking.” —Nehad Selaiha, Al-Ahram Weekly
“Wallace refuses to judge her characters, choosing instead to explore the possibility of humanity in the most inhumane conditions. THE FEVER CHART is the best theatrical production of the year.” —Joseph Fahim, Daily News Egypt
“In Naomi Wallace’s THE RETREATING WORLD, the ghosts are so recent that you feel you might lean forward in your seat and touch their fingertips … THE RETREATING WORLD is the kind of short, stark and simple play that reminds us why we need theatre at a time like this, what the playwright can achieve that the journalist cannot.” —Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
“Extraordinarily powerful, it is a privilege to attend such a theatrically excellent event.” —The Independent
“Absolutely compelling theatre.” —The Evening Standard
“The theatrical event of my week. It brings home the meaning of war, makes it personal, refuses to let it slip into unreality … a taut, beautifully written elegy and it reaches out to us now like a prophecy.” —The Observer
Author(s)
Naomi WallaceNaomi Wallace is a playwright from Kentucky. Her plays — which have been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and the Middle East — include IN THE HEART OF AMERICA, SLAUGHTER CITY, ONE FLEA SPARE, THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK, THINGS OF DRY HOURS, THE FEVER CHART: THREE VISION OF THE MIDDLE EAST, AND I AND SILENCE, THE HARD WEATHER BOATING PARTY, THE LIQUID PLAIN. Her stage adaptation of William Wharton's novel Birdy was produced on the West End in London. In 2009, ONE FLEA SPARE was incorporated in the permanent repertoire of the French National Theater, the Comédie- Francaise. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie's repertoire in 300 years. Films: Lawn Dogs, The War Boys, Flying Blind (co-written with Bruce McLeod). Awards: Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (twice), Joseph Kesselring Prize, Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, Obie Award, and the 2012 Horton Foote Award for most promising new American play. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Wallace received the inaugural Windham Campbell prize for drama and in 2015, an Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Related Plays
Play Description
Based on a true story, a kidnapped “cowboy” Marine serving the U N in Lebanon’s maze of rival Muslims drags America into this new world as the mystery of his capture unfolds.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (1 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Four Arab women from across the ages meet in the afterlife. As these characters — who include the Biblical Delilah and a secular modern Arab-American — struggle to come to terms with their lives and their choices, this shockingly funny play skewers traditional views on sex, family, and terrorism.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 female)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Leila and Rashid, Egyptian Americans, attempt to solve their relationship issues by inviting a relative stranger into their bedroom to engage in a threesome. What begins as a hilariously awkward evening soon becomes an experience fraught with secrets, raising issues of sexism, possession, and independence.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 95 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
Three years ago, Sarah Kennedy thought she was hired as a translator for a corporate military prison in Baghdad, only to discover that she would be acting as an interrogator instead, retrieving information from prisoners of war — by any means necessary. Now, Lily Strauss, a disgraced reporter in the waning days of newspaper journalism, must uncover Sarah's story, cutting through webs of corporate lies and government deception until finally faced with the choice between her own journalistic ideals and the devastating consequences of telling the truth. A political thriller, ON THE HEAD OF A PIN is an exploration of who watches the watchers and what happens when they look away.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (5 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 170 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Peace among Muslims, Christians, and Jews? It happened once, in Spain, for several hundred years, why couldn’t it happen again? When NYU students Ibrahim and Paloma study an ancient Muslim treatise on the art and practice of love, they debate the complexities of romantic relationships while falling into one. After tragedy strikes this Muslim–Christian interfaith romance, it tests the limits of love in a post-9/11 world and Ibrahim must seek the help of his friend Jared, a young Jewish attorney, to clear his name.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
BETWEEN THIS BREATH AND YOU takes place after hours in the waiting room of a clinic in West Jerusalem, where a Palestinian father confronts a nurse's aide, a young Israeli woman, about the meaning of the loss of his son and the impact it had on her life.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Short Drama (about 30 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
In this lyrical, searing one-act, an American soldier has an unexpected encounter with two Afghan sisters who are ready to embark on a new life. Their fates — and his — become entangled as the lines between their divergent realities become dangerously blurred.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 50 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Set in South Lebanon, HOW HIS BRIDE CAME TO ABRAHAM is a soaring love story. When a fleeing refugee encounters a soldier wounded by a roadside bomb, irresistible Palestinian and Israeli characters clash, then ignite a passion that heals.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
THE TALENTED ONES looks at the thwarted dreams of immigrants eager to make it in their adopted country. As converts to the American Dream, how much more challenging and lethal do the notions of success and failure become? Omar is falling down in his attempts to make a success of his life, while his wife, Cindy, a fellow immigrant, appears to be doing much better, and is becoming increasingly frustrated by Omar’s struggles. His American best friend, Patrick, may be Cindy's way out. Mixing realism with memory and dance, THE TALENTED ONES dissects with increasing ferocity this couple's marriage and aspirations.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male, doubling)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$0.00–$15.95Play Description
Two college professors have left their homeland for a country that soon devolves into a war zone. They're accustomed to lives of comfort, but it's hard to get comfortable when you're chained to a radiator. HOSTAGES explores the intricacies of human nature when it's deprived of personal contact and torn from the pleasantries of everyday life.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Midway through Albert Camus's The Stranger, an Arab is killed. Leaping from this moment and working backwards through possible histories of tangled romance, ethnic conflict, and random violence, Betty Shamieh has crafted a play inspired by this unnamed character. Infused with elements of Middle Eastern oral storytelling traditions and set in French Algiers on the brink of revolution, THE STRANGEST is an absurdist murder mystery about three Algerian brothers who vie for the love of the same woman. Their bitter rivalry ends with one brother being inexplicably gunned down by a French stranger.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes