Type of Listing
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Small Casts (2-6)
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Home Safe
by Ellen Cooper
Drama, 2 girls, one interior set, 55 minutes. Recommended for teens and adults.. $ 6.50
Many have been the "issue" plays written about the perils of alcohol for teens, but much less material is available about another dark and often hidden issue -an alcoholic parent. Where can these children of alcoholics-often too ashamed to share their troubles-go for help?
Home Safe, by Ellen Cooper, is a real play. It offers no easy answers. Instead a powerful and compelling look at two sisters who try to create a safe haven in the midst of their dysfunctional family. It opens up questions, and offers insight, and laughter amid tears. And what virtuoso roles the parts of the sisters provide!
The two-person cast, simple set, and the vitally relevant theme make Home Safe an ideal vehicle for an artist-in-education company touring schools and performing it in conjunction with workshops and discussions. I hope it will also be picked up by colleges, where its material will be just as relevant as it is to high school and junior high school students, and by alcohol abuse programs looking for education material that strikes at the heart.
Home Safe is a deeply moving and honest look at a painful subject. It is told with love and understanding and a deep sympathy that comes with knowledge and forgiveness. It has tenderness, humor, pain and beauty. In one way it is so simple, and yet it deals with a complex issue that needs our understanding. I know of nothing that deals with the issue of alcohol abuse in such an imaginative, dramatic and unadorned fashion. Home Safe is a play that everyone should see.
Graham Whitehead
Child's Play Theatre
Tempe, Arizona
Very few plays inspire tears, gales of laughter, and intense conversation, but Home Safe is one of those plays. That was my reaction to the rehearsed reading at the Bonderman National Playwriting Symposium, and again at my production at Drury University and the Vandivort Center Theatre here in Springfield. This is important play about a difficult topic, but its exquisitely drawn young characters and their fresh, funny, heartbreaking dialogue also make it a theatrical experience not to be missed.
Sandra Asher
Drury University
Springfield, Missouri
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