Phantasie
Play Description
An adoptee searches for her natural mother, seeking to discover who she is from the person from whom she came.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (4 female, 2 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“PHANTASIE, by Sybille Pearson, is about something — something that, even if it does not affect you directly, you can care about … PHANTASIE (which is German for ‘daydream,’ and complexly relevant here) works as much in stage images as in words, and always exhibits a fresh turn of mind … a play that is intelligent, sometimes moving, and always imaginative … a generally thoughtful and compelling evening.” —John Simon, New York Magazine
“An adoptee searches for her natural mother in Sybille Pearson’s PHANTASIE, but that search is less for a new parent than it is for clues to the character’s buried self. Without knowledge of the circumstances of her birth or of her parentage, the woman has had to fantasize possibilities. In her imaginative musings, she is everything from the child of a mother who was raped to the unacknowledged daughter of a Rothschild … this perceptive new play … is inward and elliptical, at times enigmatic. The central character’s quest will continue long after the play has ended. There are no sudden emotional outbursts or last-minute revelations. The drama remains interior … that intensifies the interest … touching … truthfulness within a natural reserve … quietly affecting … [an] Intimate journey of discovery.” —Mel Gussow, The New York Times
Author(s)
Sybille PearsonSybille Pearson wrote the book for the musical BABY for which she received a Tony nomination. A revised version of BABY was presented at The Papermill Playhouse in 2004. She has written the book for the musical adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel Giant, music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa. Ms. Pearson and Mr. LaChiusa have recently been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to write an original opera. She is the author of the plays: SALLY AND MARSHA , PHANTASIE, WATCHING THE DOG, UNFINISHED STORIES, which was selected for publication in American Theatre Magazine, TRUE HISTORY AND REAL ADVENTURE a play with music (composer Mel Marvin), BE BOLD, a play commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles on the life of Salka Viertel and PROMISE ME, a play on the life of the pianist Mona Golabek produced by the Mark Taper Forum. She has won the Berrilla Kerr Award for Playwriting, the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, has been a recipient of a Rockefeller Playwrights Fellowship, a Ucross Fellowship, a participant at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, the Sundance Playwrights Conference and the Sundance Theater Lab. She is a founding member of The Playwrights Circle at The New York Theatre Workshop and an Artistic Resident at the Vineyard Theater in New York City. She is a Panelist for the O'Neill Musical Theater Conference, and a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 6/1/1989 |
| Pages | 74 |
| ISBN | 9780881450798 |
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:
Originally produced by the Vineyard Theater, New York
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
MERCY STREET is Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton’s only play and incorporates many of the themes that infuse her poetry, the deeply personal, the nature of madness, and the subjectivity of truth.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 75 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00
Play Description
A young woman returns home to find her gauche and uneducated beautician mother has hired The Perfect Daughter, taken a handsome young cowboy lover, is learning French, and is adopting a buffalo. What is Mom up to? Has this lower-middle-class older woman who is taking on all these airs lost her mind? And where did her sudden wealth come from? These are only a few of the mysteries lawyer Vicky and her ineffectual husband have to figure out in this fast-moving comedy which explores the mother-daughter relationship and the nature of familial and many other kinds of love.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (4 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Sally wants to leave home, as soon as possible, for art school in New York. Her mother seems increasingly distracted, or absent, and her younger brother, Christopher, is no help. Her successful father may or may not be involved with a younger woman at work. After Sally has a confrontation with her father, her mother suddenly disappears in the middle of the night. The play is about the last two weeks in the life of a perfect American family. But as this family unravels, as words and longings are misunderstood, and things fall apart, a larger spirit in each of these characters begins to show signs of life.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 130 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Responsible Meg has always taken care of her bipolar younger brother Matt. But when she decides to get pregnant — and have her embryos screened for bipolar disorder — is she taking the idea of “being responsible” too far? A funny and surprising play about bioethics, siblings, and the limits of unconditional love.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Sam’s fiancée, Katie, has been raped by a former lover. Or has she? With a wedding date looming, Sam fights to save their now fragile relationship, even while undertaking a desperate search to uncover Katie’s secret past. Whispers become certainty, certainty becomes obsession, and Sam must decide: How far is too far for love?
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 75 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.95
Play Description
In the midst of our unsettled world, The Apple Family, last seen in 2014, return; though not over the dinner table but via Zoom. This hour-long play picks them up in the midst of their now suspended and quarantined lives. They talk about grocery shopping, friends lost, new ventures on a hoped-for horizon, all during a time when human conversation (and theater) may be more needed that ever before.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 60 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Human spontaneous combustion is not something that most people worry about, but Amalia Parker does, and that’s why she won’t sleep with Rob. Sex with someone she doesn’t care about might not be so dangerous, but with the man she truly loves? A definite possibility. This is the kind of logic that only makes sense in the Parker household, where Mom cooks obsessively, Dad has turned the house into an 18-hole golf course, and ancient maiden Aunt Emily does laundry and practices the family art of selective sight. A sweet, quirky comedy.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (4 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.95
Play Description
THE GABRIELS trilogy chronicles a year in the life of a neighboring family who reunite in real time at three different points across 2016 to celebrate, remember, and wait for the world to change. History and politics, art and culture, love and hate are all on the table as the Gabriels gather in the kitchen of the house they grew up in — ultimately revealing the deep, human impact of one of the most extraordinary years in American history. Part One, HUNGRY: To the rhythm of peeling, chopping and mixing, HUNGRY places us in the center of the Gabriels’ kitchen. The family discusses their lives and disappointments, and the world at large and nearby, as they struggle against the fear of being left behind and the challenge to find resilience in the face of loss.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (5 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
I have always loved the story in Henry James’ novel, Washington Square, and I needed to find something for a young Hispanic actress I wanted to work with, so with Ron Bashford’s help, we adapted the story. As we worked on it, we found that it fit really well in the early Sixties, on the verge of the huge social revolution. This time period also made sense because the female lead was trapped in the fifties by her conservative mother, a successful woman who was ashamed of having a half-Hispanic child. Sometimes, when you’re working on a play, things fall in place — the backstory for our play (I say “our” because Ron Bashford was such a close collaborator) arose effortlessly out of the story we were presenting. As the last scene takes place, the young Hispanic daughter hears the beginning of a Sixties protest and leaves the house to join them.
—Constance Congdon
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (4 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
The play centers on a family of Greek-Americans in a small Massachusetts town during the closing days of World War II.
Production Info
Cast: 17 total (5 female, 12 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
When Amelia’s mother receives Compassionate Release from her prison sentence, Amelia’s carefully constructed world is threatened. Twenty-six years of living vicariously through her beloved TV characters doesn’t prepare her for the actual drama of her mother’s return or the advances of a charming co-worker. The ticking clock of her mother’s illness means Amelia must decide if her fictional life is safer than the possibility of her own story.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (3 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
THE HOPPER COLLECTION follows the story of a married woman, Marjorie, obsessed by an encounter with the New England artist Edward Hopper
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes