A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE

Night Sky

Full-Length Play, Drama  /  3w, 3m

Susan Yankowitz

When she is hit by a car, the brilliant and articulate astronomer Anna loses her ability to speak, a condition known as aphasia. In a series of brief, often comic episodes, this touching play dramatizes the impact of Anna’s changed circumstances on her lover, her teenage daughter and her professional life.

Night Sky

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  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    3w, 3m
  • Duration
    Duration
    90 minutes
  • Suggested Use
    • Cutting Approved for Competition
    • Monologues
    • Scene work
  • Audience
    Target Audience
    Adult, Senior, Teen (Age 14 - 18)

Details

Summary

This extraordinary drama premiered to acclaim in a New York production directed by Joseph Chaikin. Night Sky theatrically explores what Steven Hawking has called the two mysteries remaining to us: the brain and the cosmos. When she is hit by a car, the brilliant and articulate astronomer Anna loses her ability to speak, a condition known as aphasia. What emerges from her mouth is a hodge-podge of unconnected words alternately confusing, funny, original and wise – and sometimes all four. In a series of brief, often comic episodes, the play follows Anna through her illness and ultimate acceptance of herself – a personal triumph, despite a continuing infirmity – and dramatizes the impact of her changed circumstances on her lover, her teenage daughter and her professional life.

Everyone will be touched by the themes this play considers – language, inner and outer space, the challenges of a devastating affliction, the consolations and ordeals of family life and, most of all, the universal hunger and need for communication.

The play has been extremely popular with audiences and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, Hebrew and German.

History
Night Sky premiered at the Judith Anderson Theatre in New York City on May 14, 1991. The play was produced by the Women’s Project & Productions under the directorship of Julia Miles and directed by Joseph Chaikin. In the spring of 2009, a revised version of Night Sky was produced off-Broadway by Stan Raiff/Power Productions in association with The National Aphasia Association. Directed by Daniella Topol, the production featured Jordan Baker, Lauren Ashley Carter, Dan Domingues, Tuck Milligan, Maria-Christina Oliveras and Jim Stanek.
Keywords
Performing Groups
ANNA – 40s; an astronomer; intelligent and intense; moves from extreme self-confidence to extreme vulnerability in course of play. The role requires vocal and physical stylization plus the ability to convey a wide range of emotions.
DANIEL – 30s; Anna’s live-in lover, younger than she by 5 years; opera singer, baritone (see note below*); warm, outgoing, playful, loving and sensual.
JENNIFER – 16; Anna’s daughter; bright, sarcastic, self-dramatizing and tender-hearted – a very contemporary teenager.
BILL – 45-60; Anna’s astronomer colleague; socially clumsy but imaginative and charismatic in the classroom.
SPEECH THERAPIST and other female roles – 30s-50s; Articulate; patient; empathic; skilled in active listening. Versatility and a flair for creating a variety of convincing characters are essential to the role.
APHASIC PATIENT and other male roles (including young man at dance) – 25-35; the role requires improvisatory skills, vocal calisthenics and ease with non-naturalistic performance styles.

*Because DANIEL is an opera singer, it is ideal to cast an actor with a fine voice so that his career seems credible. However, it is even more important to have an excellent actor in the role, so if a choice is necessary, please consider the acting requirements over the vocal ones. Tapes can, if necessary, be used as support, enhancement or substitutes. And, except for the “Papageno” aria in Scene 9, all other music sung by DANIEL can be selected by the actor and director.
  • Time Period Present Day
  • Setting A versatile set suggesting several naturalistic and abstract spaces.
  • Features Contemporary Costumes / Street Clothes
  • Additional Features No intermission
  • Duration 90 minutes
  • Cautions
    • No Special Cautions

Media

“A moving and poetic experience. Like the sky, it is a play of seemingly infinite depth.” – Los Angeles Times

“Susan Yankowitz’s Night Sky is a rare thing: a play with a mind. It is also about the mind as universe, where language is internal astronomy. It shows us that more than hearts can be broken.” – Variety

“The enthralling Night Sky, running off-Broadway in Manhattan, may be the accomplished Susan Yankowitz’s best play yet. Her first-hand knowledge of aphasia and exemplary research into astronomy are breathtaking as she embraces an insight of Stephen Hawking’s that the two abiding unsolved mysteries are the brain and the cosmos. She makes a poetic and dramatic case for the resemblance or correspondence between the black holes of the universe and the dark recesses of the human brain, and unponderously enlightens us in her serious and humorous, wise and profoudly moving play.” – John Simon, Bloomberg News

“The most daring aspect of Night Sky is its willingness to contemplate the absence of speech as a benefit rather than a disability, the source of a renewed sense of wonder in minutiae, of personal achievement in every complete sentence, and of revelation in every verbal slip... The last word, the summing-up of Anna’s attempt to deliver her paper, conveys both her inability and her scientist’s sense of wonder at the universe – ‘speechless.’” – Michael Feingold, Village Voice

“Bursting with wit, intelligence and energy, Night Sky is a sharp, multi-layered exploration of the cosmos and human beings’ place in it, using all the resources of theatre to address the limits of our understanding of physical and metaphysical universes. It’s an illuminating work, not least in its exploration of gender issues while bringing a human dimension to the other-worldly speculations of science.” – Peter Cudmore, The Scotsman

Licensing & Materials

  • Minimum Fee: $110 per performance

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Authors

Susan Yankowitz

Susan Yankowitz
Susan Yankowitz is a playwright, novelist, lyricist and librettist. Among her plays are The Revenge, Phaedra in Delirium (winner of the QRL poetic play competition); Under The Skin, Terminal, and 1969 Terminal 1996, both pieces collaborations with Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatr ...
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