A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE

Dead City

Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy  /  4w, 3m

A modern riff on Joyce's Ulysses

"Sheila Callaghan...writes with a world-weary tone and has a poet's gift
for economical description." – New York Times

" Dead City, Sheila Callaghan's riff on James Joyce's Ulysses
is stylish, lyrical, fascinating, occasionally irritating, and
eminently worthwhile... the kind of work that is thoroughly
invigorating." – Backstage

  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    4w, 3m
  • Duration
    Duration
    90 minutes
  • SubGenre
    Subgenre
    Adaptations (Literature)
  • Suggested Use
    • Scene work
  • Audience
    Target Audience
    Adult
Accolades
Accolades
  • Sheila Callaghan is the 2007 recipient of the Whiting Award for Drama

Details

Summary

It's June 16, 2004. Samantha Blossom, a chipper woman in her 40s, wakes up one June morning in her Upper East Side apartment to find her life being narrated over the airwaves of public radio. She discovers in the mail an envelope addressed to her husband from his lover, which spins her raw and untethered into an odyssey through the city.... a day full of chance encounters, coincidences, a quick love affair, and a fixation on the mysterious Jewel Jupiter. Jewel, the young but damaged poet genius, eventually takes a shine to Samantha and brings her on a midnight tour of the meat-packing district which changes Samantha's life forever—or doesn't. This 90 minute comic drama is a modernized, gender-reversed, relocated, hyper-theatrical riff on the novel Ulysses, occurring exactly 100 years to the day after Joyce's jaunt through Dublin.

History

Dead City was commissioned by Playwrights Horizons with funding provided by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Commissioning Program and was developed in New York City at The Lark Theatre, New Georges, and The Public Theatre. The plays was first presented by artistic director Susan Bernfield and associate director Susan Cameron Sunde at New Georges in New York City in spring 2006. The play was subsequently presented at Dog and Pony Theatre in Chicago in fall 2006.

Cast Attributes

SAMANTHA - female, mid-forties, optimistic, cheery, round, good-natured, attractive
JEWEL - female, 22, undernourished, broody, bad teeth, a poet and intellectual
GABRIEL/ HANK/ HOMELESS MAN/ SAM ONE - male, mid-forties, sexy-as-hell
BEATRICE/ WOMAN ONE/ NORA/ SAM TWO - female, mid-late twenties, bull-like, loud, hot shit
HENDRA/ ROSALIND/ GLORIA/ PIPER/ A.A.M./ SAM THREE - female, mid-thirites, sharp, together, very stylish
VOICE/ MAN ONE/ JACOB/ WOMAN TWO/ SAM FOUR/ CABBIE - male, 45-44, somewhat crusty and lecherous
CHILD/ YOUNG MAN/ ERIK/ WAITER/ SAM FIVE - male, mid-twenties an adorable boyish young man

  • Time Period Contemporary
  • Features Contemporary Costumes / Street Clothes
  • Additional Features No intermission, Multimedia
  • Duration 90 minutes
  • Cautions
    • Mild Adult Themes

Media

REVIEWS

"Wonderful... Sheila Callaghan's pleasingly witty and theatrical new drama that is a love letter to New York masquerading as hate mail...[Callaghan] writes with a world-weary tone and has a poet's gift for economical description. The entire dead city comes alive... – The New York Times

"Dead City, Sheila Callaghan's riff on James Joyce's Ulysses is stylish, lyrical, fascinating, occasionally irritating, and eminently worthwhile... the kind of work that is thoroughly invigorating." –Backstage

Licensing & Materials

  • Minimum Fee: $120 per performance

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Authors

Sheila Callaghan

Sheila Callaghan's plays have been produced and developed with Soho Rep, Playwright's Horizons, Yale Rep, South Coast Repertory, Clubbed Thumb, The LARK, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, New Georges, The Flea, Woolly Mammoth, Boston Court, and Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre, ...
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