Witness (play)

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Witness
Written by Terrence McNally
Date premieredNovember 21, 1968
Place premiered Off-Broadway
Original language English
Genreone-act play

Witness is a one-act play by Terrence McNally which opened Off-Broadway at the Gramercy Arts Theatre on November 21, 1968, [1] and closed on January 26, 1969. [2]

Contents

Production

Witness premiered Off-Broadway at the Gramercy Arts Theatre in 1968. It starred James Coco, Sally Kirkland, Richard Marr, and Joe Ponazecki, and was paired with another McNally play, Sweet Eros . The production ran through January 26, 1969. [3]

Witness is one of McNally's earlier plays and received mixed reviews. [4] [5]

Overview

The play depicts a man who is planning to assassinate the President of the United States from the window of a building, all the while keeping a gagged and bound victim as a witness to his sanity. [6] One of the play's major themes is loneliness. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terrence McNally</span> American playwright (1938–2020)

Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Coco</span> American stage and screen actor (1930–1987)

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References

  1. Raymond-Jean Frontain (4 October 2019). The Theater of Terrence McNally: Something about Grace. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 328–. ISBN   978-1-68393-216-1.
  2. Burns Mantle; John Arthur Chapman; Garrison P. Sherwood (1969). Burns Mantle Yearbook. Dodd, Mead.Page.436
  3. "'Sweet Eros' Listing" Internet Off-Broadway Database, accessed August 21, 2015
  4. "OCC Traces McNally from Witness to Dunelawn, Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1999
  5. 1 2 Zinman, Toby Silverman. Terrence McNally, A Casebook, Edited by Toby Silverman Zinman, Taylor & Francis, 1997, p. 30
  6. The Guide to World Drama: Witness, by Terrence McNally

Further reading