The Playwrights Database
DON DELILLO (1936 - )
Nationality: USAemail: n/a Website: Click here
Literary Agent: Lois Wallace Literary Agency
Don DeLillo was born and raised in New York City. He has written thirteen novels and three stage plays and has won many honours in the US and abroad including the National Book award, the PEN/Faulkner award for Fiction and the Jerusalem Prize. "I became a writer by living in New York and seeing and hearing and feeling all the great, amazing and dangerous things the city endlessly assembles. And I also became a writer by avoiding serious commitment to anything else." --DeLillo to Jonathan Bing, 1997
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below is a list of Don DeLillo's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Day Room, The Engineer of Moonlight, The Libra Love-Lies-Bleeding Mystery at the Middle of Ordinary Life, The Rapture of the Athlete Assumed into Heaven, The Valparaiso Word For Snow, TheDay Room, The
The play opens in a brightly lit hospital room occupied by two men. One, the amiable Budge, does Tai Chi exercises while trying, without much success, to strike up a conversation with his taciturn roommate, Wyatt. Then, slowly but inexorably, their world begins to spin away from reality as they are visited by a series of fellow patients and hospital staffers, all of whom, it turns out, may not be what they seem. Oddly normal, but also oddly frightening, it is soon apparent that they have strayed in from the psychiatric ward of the adjacent arno Klein Wing, and are all quite mad. In the second act, which is set in the day room of the psychiatric ward, the same performers reappear, but with different identities. Some of them, claiming to be actors, transform the room into a tacky motel suite in which a play-within-the-play is to take place; others become tourists searching for the renowned "arno Klein Theater Company"; and one man, strait-jacketed and tied in a chair, "becomes" a television set. at last arno Klein himself appears, and proves to be the man (Budge) who started the play. So, in the end, we have come full circle, with appearance and reality, madness and normality, still tantalizingly undefined, and with the growing conviction that all the world may indeed be no more than a stage-and all its inhabitants merely players.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts Apr 1986
Organisations:
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1st Published:
American Theatre Magazine, NY - September, 1986.
Published by Knopf, 1987 -
Published by Knopf, 1987 -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
Comedy
Parts:
Male: 6 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageEngineer of Moonlight, The
Synopsis:
Here is a statement from DeLillo about the play, from the 1979 interview in Anything Can Happen: We talked earlier about people in rooms. The play is just that. People talking, people silent, people motionless, people juxtaposed with objects. There are four characters. What connects them is the awesome power of their loving. The main character is Eric Lighter, a once-great mathematician who is now a pathetic but compelling ruin. If the play has a line of development at all, it hinges on whether Eric's former wife will abandon a recent marriage and successful career to help the others transcribe and type Eric's half-insane memoirs, along with other day-to-day chores and obligations. The idea is absurd on the face of it. Diana ridicules the notion. Toward the end of the play she leaves the stage still denying that she'll stay. But we know she still feels a powerful love for Eric, for the aura of greatness that clings to him, and we feel uncertain about taking her at her word. The suggestion that she may stay is contained in a strange board game she'd played with the others earlier in Act Two. A game involving words and logic used in unfamiliar ways. If we take this game as a play within the play, what we see is that Diana, who has never played before, gradually comes to understand the strange and complex nature of the game--an understanding the audience doesn't share. Toward the end she is elated; she is saying it all begins to fit, the colors, the shapes, the names. She wants to play.
Notes:
written in 1979. Note: a character mentioned in the play, Sister Edgar, years later appears in the story "The Angel Esmeralda", which is included in Underworld.
1st Produced:
Apparently this play has never been produced -
Organisations:
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1st Published:
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Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageLibra
Synopsis:
See also "Reimagined, history repeats itself" by Clifford Terry, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune May 8, 1994, section 13, pages 10, 22. There's a long DeLillo quote on Libra: I was, of course, aware that no serious novelist has treated this [assassination] material and decided to take a crack at it. It started with a slight air of detachment, even unreality. You know, I couldn't quite accept the fact that I was entering this anaconda of information and mystery and confusion. This is the book I will have the most trouble outdistancing, because these people cling to you--particularly Lee Oswald himself. I tried to get as close to Oswald as my abilities allowed. I was not looking to create a myth about Oswald--or Kennedy, for that matter. I'm not sympathetic toward him. For me, he was guilty, he wasn't a dupe, he wasn't tricked. He did it, and his hard life is not a justification. I don't think America made Lee Oswald shoot at the president. It was inner turmoil, a deep character flaw and a desperation.
Notes:
adapted and directed by John Malkovich. DeLillo was involved with the adaptation, as detailed in a story by Mel Gussow which appeared in The New York Times, May 18, 1994 (page C17). DeLillo is quoted: "John has his own attack. He wants to create a stage space in which the novel can reinvent itself. The play comes at you with lots of texture and with a level of irreverence that is advantageous."
1st Produced:
Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, USA >>> 15 May 1994
Organisations:
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1st Published:
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Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
adaptation
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageLove-Lies-Bleeding
Love-Lies-Bleeding focuses on the last years of a free-spirited artist, now left invalid after a second stroke. His estranged son, wife and ex-wife struggle over the ultimate question: How do they let him die with dignity? as DeLillo masterfully tackles the ethics of their decision, he amplifies what it truly means to be alive.
Notes:
reading at Boise Contemporary Theater in Boise, Idaho. 02 May 2005
1st Produced:
Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, USA >>> 27 May 2006
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Scribner, 2006 -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageMystery at the Middle of Ordinary Life, The
http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=90
Notes:
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1st Produced:
a benefit evening at the American Repertory Theatre 2000
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Zoetrope magazine (volume 4, number 4), out in late 2000 -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
playlet
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageRapture of the Athlete Assumed into Heaven, The
Synopsis:
A just victorious tennis player is "interviewed" after the match, though in fact we only hear the interviewer, who begins, "How special it must feel, Bobby, finishing off a career in this fashion, it must feel like a culmination you could only dream of years ago, ..."
Notes:
Part of a festival of one-minute plays. A short film was made of this piece in 2007, directed by Keith Bogart, and starring John Laroquette and Tyler Hoechlin. Five minutes long! Looks like it was shown at SXSW in 2007
1st Produced:
American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts Apr 1990
Organisations:
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1st Published:
published in The Quarterly, Volume 15, 1990, and reprinted in Harper's in December 1990 and in the South Atlantic Quarterly in Spring 1992. This piece also appears in the book after yesterday's crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology edited by Larry McCaffery (Penguin, 1995). -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
one min play
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageValparaiso
Michael Majeski finds himself in a surprising situation when he thinks he is flying to Valparaiso, Indiana. Through a series of mix-ups, Michael finds himself first flying to Valparaiso, Florida and then eventually lands in Valparaiso, Chile. Even more unexpected is the media onslaught that follows. He finds himself pursued by every kind of interviewer and the object of fascination for the American audience. as his fame grows, Michael's personal life begins to erode. He and his wife Livia struggle to keep their marriage and their lives in tact despite the growing intensity of the media spotlight. Ultimately, Michael must choose between his sanity and his celebrity
Notes:
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1st Produced:
American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts 29 Jan 1999
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Scribner, New York, 1999 -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageWord For Snow, The
Synopsis:
his one-act performance follows an encounter between a modern pilgrim and a self-exiled scholar, attempting to come to terms with the ultimate contemporary question: what is happening? What follows is a dazzling comic and philosophical journey through language, climate change and the modern world, written with the characteristic beauty and insight that has long made DeLillo one of our greatest cultural commentators.
Notes:
Music by Giuseppe Lomeo
1st Produced:
Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, USA >>> 27 Oct 2007
Organisations:
Chicago Humanities Festival
1st Published:
- -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
one act play 20 min
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: - Other: precussion
Further Reference:
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