n/a

Never performed

c1950

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-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Play/Drama

-

-

-

Notes: -

Synopsis: play written for amateur drama group "The Query Players" to which A.W belonged. Never performed. Precursor to Chicken Soup with Barley.

Studio Theatre, Birmingham Rep, Birmingham

1983

-

in The Plays of Arnold Wesker 5, Penguin, London

1989

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One Act

-

1

-

Notes: First in a cycle of six 'One Woman Plays'. aka Annie, Anna, Annabella, broadcast 1983. Specially written for Nichola MacAuliffe. Three monologues of female characters aged 60, 24 & 45

Synopsis: ANNIE, an old tramp-cum-char-lady who 'does' for a poor Jewish family in London's East End, reminisces her sad old life and describes the family she works for - Wesker's parents. Annie Wobbler is the real name of a childhood memory. When she has finished, ANNIE whips off her eccentric clothes beneath which is a red-head in black underwear who is ANNA, a working-class student who has just achieved her degree in French, and is making up to go on a date with her boyfriend. This date is going to be very different from previous dates - she's now a B.A. first-class honours, and has gained a devastating confidence. Made up she looks stunning; but her red hair is a wig, and the dress she puts on is really two dresses. When the scene ends she removes wig, unhitches one of the dresses, and is now- ANNABELLA, a novelist whose third novel is a great success. She has been interviewed endlessly, and is about to face three more, She rehearses deceit. To the first she'll offer the image of a modest writer; to the second, an arrogant writer; to the third, tired of play-acting, she offers the truthful image: a terrified writer who fears she's mediocre.Each woman feels flawed, each woman tries to survive the flaws.

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student production at The Miskin Theatre, University of North Kent

2000

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in The Plays of Arnold Wesker 7, Penguin, London

1990

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Adaptation

27

12

6 man band. Chamber trio. As many extras as possible. Scope for much doubling.

Notes: An adaptation of the novel by Aharon Appelfeld. It contains so many characters it can only be performed by a National Theatre or University Theatre Department with large resources.

Synopsis: It's a chilling novel. Badenheim is a spa to which middle-class, bohemian Jews have been coming year after year. At its centre is an arts festival. In 1939 strange happenings occur. Sanitary inspectors gradually take over the spa and inform it's Jewish residents that soon they'll be going to Poland. Barbed wire springs up around the small town, guard dogs proliferate, other Jews appear, herded into the area, and the facilities begin to break down or cease to function. Over the summer the spa falls to pieces. On the last day all the Jews are marched to the station for transport to Poland. Some are quite looking forward to the journey. They imagine it will be a train that takes them to their destination. When cattle trucks draw up, the festival organiser, ever optimistic, observes:'

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BBCTV Easter slot

2000

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-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

15 min monologue

One Act

1

-

-

Notes: suitable for the stage

Synopsis: What became of the minor characters in the Gospels whose lives brushed with Jesus? Part of a TV series for Easter 2000 set in a Victorian house around the late 1 800s. In each room is a Gospel character. BARABBAS, some thought a thief some a rebel, is now in his 70s reflecting on what went wrong.

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Basildon, Essex

1989

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in The Plays of Arnold Wesker 7, Penguin, London

1990

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Community Play

-

-

125 actors

Notes: -

Synopsis: A play commissioned to celebrate the 40th birthday of the new town of Basildon. Because it is a community play engaging 125 members of the community, it is impossible to be performed by anyone else. But it's an interesting read, recording a fascinating history of London's East Enders who were the first Basildon dwellers. Out of their story is explored the theme of 'the stranger in our midst'.

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Norwich Playhouse

1996

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in The Plays of Arnold Wesker 7, Penguin, London

1990

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Play/Drama

8

3

11 actors play 34 characters

Notes: commissioned to open The Norwich Playhouse

Synopsis: In 1144 a young boy, WILLIAM, was found brutally murdered in Thorpe Wood, Norwich. The Jews were accused of slaughtering a Christian child to use his blood for Passover and mock the crucifixion. This is the genesis of the first ever 'blood libel' accusation - a calumny which has spread throughout Europe and persists to this day. The Prior of the Norwich Priory, ELIAS, did not believe the accusation. The charge was dropped. Twenty years later the monk, THOMAS OF MONMOUTH, joined the priory and, together with the zealous priory monks, campaigned to have WILLIAM named a martyr. They succeeded. Pilgrims came in search of miracles. The church grew rich. WILLIAM's death would today be known for what it almost certainly was in the 12th century - a crime of sexual assault. Blood Libel repeatedly enacts this while playing out the myth of martyrdom - a contrapuntal of furious irony.

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Colgnr Radio

1985

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in "Plays of Arnold Wesker 6" Penguin, London

1990

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Radio Play

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4

3

-

Notes: Bluey is slang word for lead. This was originally a radio play, 'The European Radio Commission' written in 1984.

Synopsis: HILARY HAWKINS is a judge who has reached a crisis of confidence. A suppressed incident from the past has been working corrosively within his sub-conscious. A particularly nasty court case stirs memory of an incident during his student days when he worked on a building site, and reluctantly became involved with other builders in stealing lead from a roof which they were repairing. Failing to shout a warning before throwing down the lead HILARY badly scars a plumber's face. At the height of his crisis he goes in quest of the plumber. When he finds him he can only stand and observe him from a distance imagining three possible outcomes of a confrontation he has not the courage to face, as years ago he had not the courage face a dying old sweetheart.

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1997

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Drama Association Of Wales

1997

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30 minute drama

One Act

1

1

-

Notes: -

Synopsis: A working-class couple - a carpenter and his wife. MAEVE has outgrown her husband. She has discovered Shakespeare and poetry, which she learns by heart and recites to herself. MICHAEL is intimidated by her new persona. His impoverished swearing sharply contrasts with Shakespeare's language. MAEVE wants to find a job, get out of the house. MICHAEL's pride forbids her. "I don't want people to think I can't support my family." Each time she uses what he considers a long word he beats her. After each act of violence he is filled with remorse and she has to comfort him. The cycle of beating and remorse seems never-ending.

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unproduced

1991

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-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

30 min play

One Act

3

2

and an assortment of minor and non-speaking parts

Notes: 30 minute play for TV, never made. Could be staged

Synopsis: MARK BELL, an unconventional Jewish businessman, finds himself reading Primo Levi while on a business trip in Munich. Everyone he meets is kind. The Levi text, full of Nazi brutality, contrasts with modern Germany. The experience is confusing, tense and, finally, profoundly distressing.

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Cottesloe Theatre, National Theatre, London >>>

1981

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Cape, London

1981

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Play/Drama

8

3

doubling

Notes: also an opera for which Wesker wrote the libretto, music by Robert Saxton; it opened the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 1991

Synopsis: In the 14th century a young woman, CHRISTINE CARPENTER asked the church to allow her to live the rest of her life in a cell attached to the church in the Sussex village of Shere. Through living the austere life of an anchoress CHRISTINE hoped to become pure enough to receive divine revelation. Three years on she realises that an anchoress's life is not her vocation - the word of God does not come to her. She asks the church to release her from her vows. They cannot. To do so, they argue, would be to make a cuckold of Christ. Victim of religious fervour she is doomed to live out her life imprisoned in her cell where she goes mad. A metaphor for wrong decisions - political, social, private, religious - which we make and which imprison us for life.

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Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, UK >>>

1958

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in "New English Dramatists I", Penguin, London

1959

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Play/Drama

6

4

-

Notes: part of The Wesker Trilogy. Also a film script - more a rethinking of the material than an adaptation of three plays.

Synopsis: The play spans twenty years - 1936 to 1956- in the life of the communist Kahn family: SARAH and HARRY, and their children, ADA and RONNIE. Beginning with the anti-fascist demonstrations in 1936 in London's East End and ending with the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the play explores the disintegration of political ideology parallel with the disintegration of a family. It is the son, RONNIE, who is the most deeply affected and turns on his mother who insists on remaining a communist. Her reply ends the play on a note of desperate optimism.

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Royal Court Theatre, London >>>

1962

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Cape, London

1962

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Play/Drama

20

-

-

Notes: -

Synopsis: Early 1950s. A group of Air Force conscripts begin eight weeks of 'square-bashing' - basic military drill. Two of the conscripts develop a friendship, PIP THOMPSON - a young aristocrat, CHAS WINGATE - a working class boy. The military hierarchy want PIP to become an officer. He rebelliously refuses. The officers patiently tolerate his rebellion thus defusing it and breaking his spirit. When SMILER, one of the recruits, is badly treated by NCOs, the recruits rebel. PIP, who has just accepted to become an officer, urges the hierarchy to tolerate their rebelliousness as they had tolerated his and thus, similarly, defuse their anger. The young recruits who began as a shambles end as an efficient, closely linked and acquiescent squad.

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unperformed

1983

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-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

-

Adaptation

10

5

59 characters

Notes: -

Synopsis: Based on the biography of CYNTHIA PAYNE by Paul Bailey. PAYNE ran 'a house of sex' in Streatham. It was characterised by its absence of seediness. She wanted to provide a happy service. It was a 'fun' house to which people came and relaxed and went off with a girl every so often. CYNTHIA PAYNE was busted but made such a good impression in court that she subsequently became a minor celebrity. Wesker's adaptation, for reasons completely incomprehensible to him, roused the wrath of Paul Bailey who vetoed the play ever being performed. Nor has it been published.

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not intended for production

1969

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-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

Experimental play in two acts

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-

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22 Characters

Notes: Originally entitled 'The New Play', written in 1969, totally restructured in 1996. Very personal, very experimental and not intended for performance but is available for reading.

Synopsis: While trying to write The Old Ones the author developed writer's block. Accompanying this block was a profound urge not to write plays the old way. He was ". . . tired of the conventional stage with actors coming on and off, sets changing, slightly different characters with slightly different names . . . I decided to call everyone by their real name . . . the play is about people and events I imagined were causing the block.., technically ambitious I used everything - slides, films, the Czech device of 'Laterna Magica' . . ."

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Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London >>>

1993

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-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Ten Min

-

1

-

Notes: Play reading as part of The London 'New Play Festival' dir. Katie Valentine, performed by Victoria Davar at The Lyric Hammersmith Studio 12 April. 1997.

Synopsis: A woman persuades her lover to trust her and confide in her his most heinous act. As soon as he does she is so appalled that she taunts him with it. Disappointed, his love fades. For revenge she betrays his trust.

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Old Vic, Bristol, UK >>>

2000

published in French in French theatre magazine called L'Avant Scene. March

2004

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Play/Drama

2

5

-

Notes: written 1997

Synopsis: About the 'false memory syndrome'. Based on a case history of a daughter who turns on her parents accusing them of sexually abusing her as a child.

View Excerpt

-

-

-

-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

-

-

-

-

-

Notes: mentioned in Directory of Playwrights, ed Catherine Itzin, 1983, as unpublished and unperformed. Later revised as 'Voices On The Wind.

Synopsis: -

Edinburgh

1984

-

in The Plays of Arnold Wesker 5, Penguin, London

1989

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Four ten to fifteen minute vignettes

-

-

1

-

Notes: Fifth in a cycle of six 'One Woman Plays'. See also Mother: Four Portraits

Synopsis: RUTH - woman as unmarried mother
NAOMI - woman as mother who never was
MIRIAM- woman as failed mother
DEBORAH- woman as mother earth
In France and elsewhere they have been performed with Yardsale using
STEPHANIE - woman as abandoned mother.

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Havana

1964

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Cape, London

1966

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Play/Drama

1

1

-

Notes: First handwritten draft begun 21 May. Changes made in Havana in October where it was first performed directed by the author

Synopsis: ADAM and BEATRICE have been bruised by their separate marriages and love affairs, and have agreed to spend time together in a remote cottage - a kind of sabbatical from life. In winter she is catatonic, he must attend to things. By the spring his caring has thawed her frozen feelings. When summer comes they are in love, and BEATRICE begs ADAM to come away and begin a new life together in the real world. He hesitates, afraid. They linger till Autumn. Mistakes, which destroyed previous relationships, are repeated. Love dies.

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Stockholm

1970

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Cape, London

1970

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-

Play/Drama

4

3

-

Notes: Round House, London, 1970.

Synopsis: A brilliant group of friends from working-class backgrounds have become very successful interior designers, and opened many shops selling their designs. They find their success hollow because their designs were not bought by the working-class people whom they hoped would respond to 'things of beauty'. Now they are gathered round one of their number, ESTHER, who is dying of leukaemia, Death makes them reassess both who they are and what they imagined they had achieved.It also forces them to confront their own mortality.

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Not yet performed

-

-

-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

libretto for a one-woman opera

-

-

1

-

Notes: a commissioned libretto for a one-woman opera, commissioned by Japanese composer - Shigeaki Saegusa

Synopsis: About a Japanese widow of an executed officer who was part of an officer's rebellion in the 1930s. She reflects on their short life together, and goes through an inner struggle against the notion of committing suicide to honour her husband's integrity, but finally does.

touring Italy

2001

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-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

-

Play/Drama

1

1

-

Notes: Originally commissioned in 2001 for Radio 4. Subsequently restructured for the stage.

Synopsis: MATTIE BEANCOURT, a 61 year old woman, reads the autobiography of MARK GORMAN, a famous painter. Having grown up in the same East End streets she writes to him. A correspondence develops. She visits him unannounced, and discovers he lives in near poverty and neglect. Her personality is sunny, his is curmudgeonly. Their impact upon each other is startling.

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Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, UK >>>

1960

-

Penguin, London

1960

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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-

Play/Drama

9

4

doubling

Notes: part of The Wesker Trilogy. Revised version produced London, 1960

Synopsis: ADA KAHN, the daughter of the 'Chicken Soup' family, marries DAVE SIMMONDS. They move to an isolated house in Norfolk where they struggle through a back-to-the-land experiment. DAVE makes furniture by hand. Friends and family visit them throughout their 12 rural years charting and commenting on the fortunes of their experiment. It doesn't work, but they end gratified to have had the courage to try.

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Criterion Theatre, Coventry (amateur company)

1977

-

in Dialog, Poland. (TQ Publications-Writers and Readers, London,1975)

1974

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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-

Play/Drama

24

8

+ messengers, subs etc. Doubling

Notes: 1st professional production Wilhelmshaven, West Germany 10/10/81. Written 1972

Synopsis: Setting - A Sunday Newspaper. Theme - journalism as a metaphor for the Lilliputian mentality that denies, diminishes, and leads finally to self-destruction, or self-loathing at best. The time - 70s, covering six days in six different weeks. Monday of the first week, Tuesday of the second week, and so on, a structure within which news events are discussed, and personal lives played out. The story - Mary Mortimer, the central character, a tough journalist with her own column becomes obsessed by a charismatic Labour politician she suspects is a charlatan, and is determined to bring him down. In the process she destroys the life of one of her children. STOP PRESS: Four startling interviews with Tory cabinet ministers punctuate a play written before Margaret Thatcher was voted leader of the Conservative party!

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Tokyo

2000

Chijinkai

-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

-

Musical

-

-

large cast

Notes: The Kitchen is the author's first play. It has been performed in over 50 major cities around the world. In 1988 Koichi Kimura, who had directed the play six times in Japan, gave the author £30,000 to seed the project. It took twelve years to put together

Synopsis: Set in the basement kitchen of a large restaurant, thirty chefs, waitresses, and kitchen porters, slowly begin the day preparing to serve lunch. The central story tells of a frustrated love affair between a high-spirited, young, German chef, PETER, and a married English waitress, MONIQUE. PART ONE slowly builds to a frenzy of serving. PART TWO is a lyrical period -the kitchen porters and chefs linger after serving lunch, and talk about their dreams of a better life. In PART THREE everyone returns for the slower evening service during which PETER, finally turned down by MONIQUE, goes berserk and smashes the gas leads to the ovens. The proprietor, bewildered by PETER'S violence, the nature of which he cannot understand, asks his workers what more is there to life than work, money and food.

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Royal Court Theatre, London >>>

1959

-

in "New English Dramatists 2", Penguin, London

1960

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

18

12

-

Notes: -

Synopsis: Set in the basement kitchen of a large restaurant, thirty chefs, waitresses, and kitchen porters, slowly begin the day preparing to serve lunch. The central story tells of a frustrated love affair between a high-spirited, young, German chef, PETER, and a married English waitress, MONIQUE. PART ONE slowly builds to a frenzy of serving. PART TWO is a lyrical period -the kitchen porters and chefs linger after serving lunch, and talk about their dreams of a better life. In PART THREE everyone returns for the slower evening service during which PETER, finally turned down by MONIQUE, goes berserk and smashes the gas leads to the ovens. The proprietor, bewildered by PETER'S violence, the nature of which he cannot understand, asks his workers what more is there to life than work, money and food.

View Excerpt

student production at The Miskin Theatre, University of North Kent

2000

-

in "Plays of Arnold Wesker 6", Penguin, London

1990

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Love Story

-

1

2

-

Notes: Adapted from an original film script written in 1980. Bought by Goldcrest Films but never made.

Synopsis: STANTON, professor of American literature, married with two children, has - in the course of a lecture tour in the States - fallen in love with ROSIE, a black, New York 'mature' student. He's returning to that city to spend time with her and discover the true depth of his feelings. The play charts their riotous, sad, comic, bawdy days together during which he realises their relationship cannot work.

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Seoul, South Korea

1992

-

in The Plays of Arnold Wesker 7, Penguin, London

1990

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

One Woman Play

-

-

1

for a female singer who can act

Notes: The play is punctuated by six songs, five of which are part of the letter, the sixth is MELANIE performing in concert. Lyrics by the author, beautiful melodies composed by Benjamin Till. Televised Norway, 1992. Sixth in a cycle of six 'One Woman Plays'.

Synopsis: MELANIE is an established 'chansonnier' with a cult following. She is writing a letter to her daughter, which she imagines is going to be