Ghost on Fire: A Play

by Michael Weller

Comic drama / 7 male, 4 or 5 female Various sets or unit set After showing dazzling promise in school but no success in Hollywood, director Dan Rittman suffered a breakdown and quit film making. Cameraman Neil Toomie, a hilarious, irreverent lapsed Catholic, shows up five years later with a horror film project he wants his friend to direct. Neil doesn't know that he has a brain tumor and limited time in which to rekindle the spark of old dreams. Dan doesn't realize how turning his back on his talent started a chain reaction in every aspect of his life. Their effort to make a low budget movie brings each to a moment of reckoning and reconciliation. "A poignant play suffused with humor.... A witty and rueful elegy for a generation weaned on such high idealism, learning that there are limitations to life." N.Y. Times. "We don't have a more fluent playwright than Michael Weller." L.A. Times. "Weller manages to cry out from deep inside his generation's soul." Chicago Tribune. "Exhilarating." Chicago Daily Herald. "Weller's work, one suspects, will outlast most of his more voguish contemporaries." Variety.

Genres: Plays

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1986

About the author

Michael Weller studied music composition at Brandeis University, then worked as a jazz pianist before taking his graduate degree in theater at the University of Manchester, England. His best-known plays are Moonchildren, Fishing, Loose Ends and Spoils Of War. His films include Hair and Ragtime and a teleplay of Spoils of War. He co-founded (with Angelina Fiordelissi and Suzanne Brinkley) and serves now as supervising mentor of the Mentor Project of the Cherry Lane Theatre, currently in its tenth season.

Mr. Weller's work has received an Academy Award nomination, an N.A.A.C.P. Outstanding Contribution Award, Critics Outer Circle Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant and a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, and has been honored by The Broken Watch Theatre Company which gave their playhouse his name. He is on the counsel of the Writer's Guild Fund and the Dramatists Guild of America. He lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

[Alyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent play for female characters.