The Glory of Living A Play

The award-winning, "viscerally powerful" (The Guardian) early play by the author ofSpinning Into ButterandBoy Gets Girl Set in the rural Deep South, Rebecca Gilman'sThe Glory of Livingreceived critical acclaim rare for a new American play when it had its British premiere in 1999, garnering theEvening StandardAward for Most Promising Playwright. Set to open in New York in the fall of 2001, this work focuses on fifteen-year-old Lisa, the daughter of a prostitute, and Clint, the car thief she runs away with to escape the misery of life with her mother. But the happier times that sullenly childlike Lisa yearns for never materialize, as Clint orders her to procure young runaways for him. No one notices that these teenage girls are missing until an anonymous call to the police reports their murders. Could the caller--and the killer--be Lisa? Rebecca Gilman has created a riveting, unsentimental portrait of a young woman whose most striking quality is not her capacity for evil but the depth of her emptiness, in an environment as harsh and unyielding as the contours of her life

Rebecca Gilman is one of the major young American playwrights working today. Her play Spinning Into Butter had its New York premiere at the prestigious Lincoln Center Theatre in Summer 2000 and Boy Gets Girl--chosen by Time magazine as the best play of 2000--was seen at the Manhattan Theatre Club in March 2001. Both of these plays are available from Faber and Faber. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

"Plays don't come much tougher, or more compassionate . . . Gilman's dramatic strength is that she provides the evidence and leaves us to form our own conclusions." --Michael Billington, The Guardian

"Powerful . . . Gilman's writing is enormously compelling." --Sarah Hemming, Financial Times