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| GENRE |
Epic Tragicomedy |
| LENGTH |
Full-length, 120-125 minutes
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| CAST |
6 females, 9 males (12-15 actors possible: 5-6 females, 7-9 males) |
| SET |
Minimal. A landscape of the desert that can become certain spaces through lights or sound.
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| NOTES |
Adult language and content |
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| It's the mid-1980s, just when the Human Genome Project is getting underway. After being dumped in the desert by her military-minded dad, Tara goes on the lam to escape her dysfunctional family, and bumps into a brilliant symmetry-obsessed geneticist who also happens to be a deadbeat dad and former heroin addict. As this unlikely couple tries to find some small salvation in each other, Tara's family is forced to examine their troubling past. Drawing on evolutionary psychology and Neo-Darwinian thought, this is a comic play about tragic personalities -- will they be able to move forward into the future? |
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| "Thankfully, the references to Darwinian theory are not forced down your throat. The play is not a lesson in evolutionary psychology, but a good yarn, with occasional allusions to the moral ambiguities thrown up by Darwinian thinking...the play will help to answer those critics who have accused evolutionary psychology of being inherently right-wing...but this is not some simple PR job either. The dark side of evolutionary thinking is not skirted, but exposed in agonizing clarity." |
| --Dylan Evans, The Guardian (London) |
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The 2001 Whiting Writers Award winner |
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The 2001 Will Glickman Award, Best New Play (Bay Area) |
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| Monkey in the Middle, New York University, New York City (1999). Photo: George Mott. |
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