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Pygmalion: a Romance in Five Acts

Full-Length Play, Comedy  /  6w, 6m

Shaw's dramatization of a Cockney flower girl's metamorphosis into a lady is both a fantasy and a platform for his views on social class, money and women's independence.

Pygmalion: a Romance in Five Acts

  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    6w, 6m
  • Suggested Use
    • Cutting Approved for Competition
    • UIL Approved
    • Competition or audition material

Details

Summary
Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is that his 'creation' has a mind of her own.

Licensing & Materials

  • Minimum Fee: $110 per performance

Scripts

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Authors

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. After working in an estate agent's office for a while he moved to London as a young man (1876), where he established hims ...

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