And I and Silence
Play Description
Two imprisoned young women, one African American and the other white, form a perilous bond. As they serve time they forge a plan for survival. They practice hard. If they don’t get it right they’ll lose everything: the outside world is even more dangerous to their friendship than the jail itself. Exploring the fierce dreams of youth and the brutal reality of adulthood in 1950’s segregated America.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 female, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Unmissable … an exquisitely understated examination of female friendship and unspoken love. It’s a truly American tragedy about two women who want so little and get nothing except from each other, yet it is leavened with humour. Wallace’s devastating, moving play is entirely without extravagance and artifice and is completely grounded in the harshness of the real world.” —Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
“Naomi Wallace’s short, painful prison drama uses the backdrop of racially segregated ’50s America to weave a tale of the hope that can blossom behind bars, and the despair that can destroy a life outside them.” —Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out
“In just 75 minutes on a tiny, almost bare stage, playwright Naomi Wallace conjures a compelling picture of friendship against the odds in the segregated America of the Fifties.” —Fiona Mountford, London Evening Standard
“AND I AND SILENCE is a play that takes on big themes in a very small way and has the ability to be both powerful and touching, leading to an unforgettable dénouement.” —Philip Fisher, The British Theatre Guide
“A former MacArthur genius fellow and Obie winner, Wallace is one of the most subtle and politically engaged American playwrights of her generation. Once again, the question arises: Why isn’t this superb writer more widely produced? … Thanks to Wallace’s delicate touch and generous imagination, AND I AND SILENCE unfolds into a story of love whose unexpected emotional power sideswipes the audience.” —Karen Fricker, Variety
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:
First produced by Worn Red Theatre, London
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
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Virtually all of the dialogue in this play has been constructed out of source material dating from the year 1950, and what it reveals is an America in which perception and reality are frequently at odds.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
UNFINISHED WOMEN deals with the events in a home for unwed mothers on the last day of jazz musician Charlie Parker’s life, March 12, 1955. The play digs beyond statistics and sociological theories to find the unarticulated, half-understood longings of teenage mothers.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (7 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
TEATIME AT GOLGOTHA is “a heady, wittily self-effacing drama” about the unenviable search for meaning in what is — in all likelihood — a cold, cold world. Following the stories of Longinus after the crucifixion, the last hours in the life of astronomer Tycho Brahe, and a modern day hostage situation, TEATIME leaps back and forth through the millennia, drawing meanings, parallels, and conclusions that the characters themselves characteristically fail to notice.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (1 female, 8 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Based on the actual minutes of a women’s club formed in rural South Dakota in 1934, this poignant comedy charts 70 years of personal and national history, from skinning skunks and julebukking in the ’30s to restoring native prairie in the new millennium.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (5 female)Full Length Comedy (about 140 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
GIRLS IN TROUBLE is a striking and ferocious play which dares to explore the controversial history of abortion, through its life-changing affect on women across several generations. This darkly humorous, shocking work is sure to inspire spirited debate.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (4 female, 3 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$0.00–$15.95 Play Description
In the first years after World War II the author of Animal Farm is chaperoned during an American book tour by a fetching young woman, whose job is to dissuade Orwell from telling Americans why he is a proud socialist.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male, 1 male bit part)Full Length Drama (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Virginia is getting married. As her wedding day approaches, unwanted ghosts of her mother’s past appear, unearthing a shocking past she never knew — nor wanted to. A comic nightmare about the mysterious hollows between parents and children and things that may be better left unsaid.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Sharon and Billy, sister and brother, are typical adolescents growing up in a tract home in 1950's Southern California. But when fifteen-year-old Sharon finds herself pregnant, their adolescence comes to an abrupt end.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 
Play Description
Wendy, whose secret birth name is Zena, is a negro-identified woman who is passing for white. Suddenly, on a white hot day in August, she crosses paths with her black husband from the past.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A disillusioned young woman traveling with her hippie mother’s ashes. A disillusioned TV star hitch-hiking across America. A Russian dissident turned motel owner. A lovesick farmer and a kidnapped beauty queen. Conjoined twins escaping a cult once led by a dead Senator reincarnated as a real-estate developer. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF TULSA LOVECHILD is a freeway fantasia about love and hope.
Production Info
Cast: 13 total (6 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play 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