Black Forest
Play Description
At an elite women’s college in Massachusetts, two minor crises emerge during the fall semester: the philandering head of the English Department decides to callously end his affair with a colleague, and an aging professor is caught making unwanted sexual advances toward a student. But in the academic world of the early 21st century, there is no such thing as a minor crisis. For Jacob Freundlich, an English professor approaching middle age, the sudden necessity of making moral choices, rather than just teaching books about them, leads him into a devastating midlife crisis of his own. A comedy about the necessity, and the exquisite pain, of making choices.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (5 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Honest, intelligent … the play’s dialogue has the exactly right academic-faculty sound to it; clearly, Giardina knows of what he writes.” —Variety
“A class act … a play well worth auditing … Giardina balances his banter about the great writers with penetrating looks into the lives of the male teachers.” —Hartford Courant
“In BLACK FOREST … the playwright Anthony Giardina says volumes about changes between the ’50s and the present … Attitudes toward transitions in educational, social and sexual attitude inform Mr Giardina’s new play …” —Alvin Klein, The New York Times
“Edgy and biting and funny.” —Chronicle of Higher Education
Author(s)
Anthony GiardinaAnthony Giardina was born in Waltham, Massachusetts and educated at Fordham University. He is the author of the novels Men with Debts (1984), A Boy's Pretensions (1988), Recent History (2001) and White Guys (2006), as well as the story collection The Country of Marriage (1998). His fifth novel, Norumbega Park, is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, GQ and The New York Times Magazine. His plays, including LIVING AT HOME, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, THE CHILD, SCENES FROM LA VIE DE BOHEME, THE BEACH, BLACK FOREST and CUSTODY OF THE EYES, have been produced in New York at Playwrights Horizons and the Manhattan Theater Club, and regionally at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Seattle Rep, Yale Rep, the Long Wharf in New Haven and the Cleveland Playhouse. He has taught at Smith and Mount Holyoke College, Colorado College, the University of Rochester, and in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts. He is a regular Visiting Professor at the Michener Center of the University of Texas at Austin, where he will be returning in Fall 2012. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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:
Premiered at Long Wharf Theater, New Haven
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
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