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Shipwrecked!: The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont
"A deft literate narrative folded into a vaudevillian romp."-Los Angeles Times
Donald Margulies aims to invigorate the imagination of theatergoers with a story about the nature of storytelling. Based on a Victorian hoaxer's tale of being a castaway in the South Pacific-complete with buried treasure, a giant killer octopus, and cannibals-Margulies revisits themes of authenticity and loss as he returns to what theater does best.
Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends, which has been produced throughout the world. Other plays include Sight Unseen (winner of an OBIE Award), Brooklyn Boy, and Collected Stories, among many others.
- GenresPlays
137 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
2 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Donald Margulies
40 books30 followersBorn in Brooklyn in 1954, Donald Margulies grew up in Trump Village, a Coney Island housing project built by Donald Trump's father. Margulies was exposed early to the theatre. His father, a wallpaper salesman, played show tunes on the family hi-fi and, despite a limited income, often took his children to Manhattan to attend Broadway plays and musicals.
Margulies studied visual arts at the Pratt Institute before transferring to State University of New York to pursue a degree in playwriting. During the early 80s, he collaborated with Joseph Papp, and his first Off-Broadway play, Found a Peanut, was produced at the Public Theatre. In 1983, he moved with his wife to New Haven, Connecticut, so that she could attend Yale Medical School.
In 1992, Margulies' career really began to take off when Sight Unseen won an Obie for Best New American Play. Some of his other plays include The Loman Family Picnic; Pitching to the Star; Zimmer; Luna Park; What's Wrong With This Picture?; The Model Apartment; Broken Sleep; July 7, 1994, and The God of Vengeance. Dinner With Friends--which tells the story of a seemingly happy couple who re-examine their own relationship when their best friends decide to divorce--won Margulies a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He had previously been nominated for a Pulitzer for Collected Stories, a play about a Jewish writer who is betrayed by her young disciple.
Elected to the Dramatists Guild Council in 1993, Margulies has received grants from Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His plays have premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Jewish Repertory Theatre. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.
Margulies studied visual arts at the Pratt Institute before transferring to State University of New York to pursue a degree in playwriting. During the early 80s, he collaborated with Joseph Papp, and his first Off-Broadway play, Found a Peanut, was produced at the Public Theatre. In 1983, he moved with his wife to New Haven, Connecticut, so that she could attend Yale Medical School.
In 1992, Margulies' career really began to take off when Sight Unseen won an Obie for Best New American Play. Some of his other plays include The Loman Family Picnic; Pitching to the Star; Zimmer; Luna Park; What's Wrong With This Picture?; The Model Apartment; Broken Sleep; July 7, 1994, and The God of Vengeance. Dinner With Friends--which tells the story of a seemingly happy couple who re-examine their own relationship when their best friends decide to divorce--won Margulies a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He had previously been nominated for a Pulitzer for Collected Stories, a play about a Jewish writer who is betrayed by her young disciple.
Elected to the Dramatists Guild Council in 1993, Margulies has received grants from Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His plays have premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Jewish Repertory Theatre. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 3, 2015
This is the play I'm currently in at Shadowlands Theatre in Ellenville, NY. It is a metatheatrical play with a small cast and I'm having a lot fun learning about Foley artist sounds to create during the production.
From the back cover: "The adventurous Louis de Rougemont invites you to hear his amazing story of bravery, survival and celebrity that left nineteenth-century England spellbound. Dare to be whisked away in a story of the high seas, populated by exotic islanders, flying wombats, giant sea turtles and a monstrous man-eating octopus. SHIPWRECKED examines how far we're willing to blur the line between fact and fiction in order to leave our mark on the world."
Donald Margulies, the playwright, also had a lovely essay in the back of the play script with some gems on the state of live theater:
"Dire pronouncements about the moribund sate of the American theater have been made for decades but, like the formerly remote concept of global warming, there is every indication that its demise has finally come. The audience for "serious" theater (straight plays) is dwindling. The subscriber base - the life force of non-for-profit theaters for half a century - is literally dying, and the next generation is not filling their seats. That group, the aging boomer, is too consumed by the demands of their careers, putting their kids through school, and caring for the failing elders (those vanishing subscribers) to make theatergoing the vital part of their lives it was for their parents." (52)
"The magic of theater is its power to astonish, but astonishment can occur only if the audience is willing to suspend its disbelief. How are we expected to astonish young people who have seen everything imaginable, on screens of all description, since they were born?/ We need to build a new tradition of theatergoing if the theater is to survive. The challenge is to invite this potential audience in to the theater, to entertain and move them and make them laugh. If we do our job well, they'll come again and keep coming, and one day bring their children. If we don't, if we bore or alienate them, we could lose them forever." (54)
From the back cover: "The adventurous Louis de Rougemont invites you to hear his amazing story of bravery, survival and celebrity that left nineteenth-century England spellbound. Dare to be whisked away in a story of the high seas, populated by exotic islanders, flying wombats, giant sea turtles and a monstrous man-eating octopus. SHIPWRECKED examines how far we're willing to blur the line between fact and fiction in order to leave our mark on the world."
Donald Margulies, the playwright, also had a lovely essay in the back of the play script with some gems on the state of live theater:
"Dire pronouncements about the moribund sate of the American theater have been made for decades but, like the formerly remote concept of global warming, there is every indication that its demise has finally come. The audience for "serious" theater (straight plays) is dwindling. The subscriber base - the life force of non-for-profit theaters for half a century - is literally dying, and the next generation is not filling their seats. That group, the aging boomer, is too consumed by the demands of their careers, putting their kids through school, and caring for the failing elders (those vanishing subscribers) to make theatergoing the vital part of their lives it was for their parents." (52)
"The magic of theater is its power to astonish, but astonishment can occur only if the audience is willing to suspend its disbelief. How are we expected to astonish young people who have seen everything imaginable, on screens of all description, since they were born?/ We need to build a new tradition of theatergoing if the theater is to survive. The challenge is to invite this potential audience in to the theater, to entertain and move them and make them laugh. If we do our job well, they'll come again and keep coming, and one day bring their children. If we don't, if we bore or alienate them, we could lose them forever." (54)
January 21, 2020
A funny little play!
April 30, 2024
Great story and even better play for a real life person
May 23, 2009
Just a brilliant piece of work! Again, commissioned and produced by South Coast Repertory. If anyone should have a chance to see this production, I hope that Greg Itzin will be doing Louis.
August 10, 2009
I saw this play performed at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and I loved it. The acting was fabulous, and the play itself was wonderful.
May 3, 2020
I was in this play. It was great.
November 11, 2021
theatre!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews