An Accident
Play Description
A woman is run over and critically injured. The driver appears at her bedside. There are encounters in life that take you somewhere you've never been and never meant to go.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Lydia Stryk’s compelling AN ACCIDENT … is a fictionalized account of the recovery process the playwright herself went through after [an] accident seven years ago, but it’s equally the drama of something Stryk was denied — coming to terms with the man who hit her. In an acting pas de deux … Libby’s recovery is mirrored by that man’s wrestle with his guilt and responsibility. The sharply defined stages of her progress occur within the context of their wary, forthright, prickly, warm, confrontational and erotically charged interactions … the spare, concentrated poetry of Stryk’s language. [And] the degree to which [the character] makes us feel her physical struggle in our own bodies makes her sinuous progress … our triumph, too.” —Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle
“… a visceral and emotional story about recovery, memories, and even the discovery of self. Introspective at times, and often seething with cynical humor, AN ACCIDENT is uncompromisingly human … [The play] takes us on a roller-coaster of emotion. It’s all here: guilt, sorrow, remorse, fear, shame, longing, desire … Its truth cannot be denied. It’s powerful and riveting theater.” —Clinton Stark, StarkSilverCreek
“Lydia Stryk’s play is a pounding two-person drama with utterly compelling pile drivers of empathy for the characters and surprisingly good humor …” —Albert Goodwyn, San Francisco Examiner
“AN ACCIDENT has a harrowing sense of truth that is hard to shake. With her stark, poetic language, Stryk captures the frailty of life and the omnipresence of mortality in everyday activities …” —Karen D’Souza, San Jose Mercury News
Author(s)
Lydia StrykLydia Stryk was born in DeKalb, Illinois, birthplace of barbed wire and flying ears of corn. She grew up between DeKalb and London, England, and as a child also lived in Japan where she studied Kabuki and performed on the stage, and in Iran. After high school, she trained to be an actress at the Drama Centre, London — a career she pursued in New York for exactly one year before going back to school to study history, education and later, journalism. She has a Ph.D. in Theatre from the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York. Her dissertation, "Acting Hysteria: An Analysis of the Actress and her Part," was in part an attempt to understand why her own short-lived experience acting the woman's part on stage felt pathological. She is the author of over a dozen full-length plays and a few short ones, including MONTE CARLO, THE HOUSE OF LILY, THE GLAMOUR HOUSE, AMERICAN TET, AN ACCIDENT and LADY LAY which have been produced across the United States and also in Germany and Canada. US productions include those at Denver Center Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Victory Gardens, HB Studios, The Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Magic Theatre and 7 Stages. In Germany her work has been produced at Schauspiel Essen, Theaterhaus Stuttgart, Hoftheater Dresden and the English Theater Berlin where she is an artistic associate. Scenes and monologues have been anthologized in collections by Heinemann, Applause and Smith and Kraus. Her play, AMERICAN TET, appears in "Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays" from Northwestern University Press. THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT appears in the anthology, "Here Come the Brides!" from Seal Press. Individual plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing and Dramatists Play Service and translated into German by Per Lauke Verlag, Hamburg. She is the recipient of a Berrilla Kerr Playwright Award and a Rella Lossy Playwriting Award.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 12/1/2010 |
| Pages | 42 |
| ISBN | 9780881454765 |
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Premiered at Magic Theater, San Francisco
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypublishing.com