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Testimonies: Four Plays
The first major collection by playwright Emily Mann contains four powerful docudramas. Based on extensive interviews of real people’s experiences, these plays explore various moral issues and questions that still resonate in America today.
An Autobiography is a solo piece featuring the reflections of an elderly Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by pretending to by Aryan. Jerry Talmer of the New York Post calls Annulla “one bangup 90 minutes of theatre…I don’t know when I’ve been stimulated as much by anything on the living stage.”
Still Life is composed of interviews with a Vietnam War veteran with PTSD, the pregnant wife he physically and emotionally abuses, and the mistress who finds herself entranced by his passion and violence. This Obie Award-winning play is “a powerful affair, full of passion and viability…Mann offers no easy answers or pat solutions, she simply invites us into these three characters' lives” ( Los Angeles Times ).
Execution of Justice follows the trial of the former policeman who shot San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and openly gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1979. Called “thought-provoking…a taut courtroom drama” ( New York Times ), Execution of Justice “is theatre reasserting its claim on the country’s moral conscience” ( Washington Post ).
A Requiem is “a particularly all-American tragedy” ( New York Times ) as Mann interviews those involved in the largely unreported 1979 massacre of unarmed demonstrators by members of the Ku Klux Klan, Greensboro police force, and FBI. Forbes calls Greensboro “a provocation, a potent exposé of the ‘less-than-human thing’ which fuels the politics of hate and injustice in America.”
An Autobiography is a solo piece featuring the reflections of an elderly Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by pretending to by Aryan. Jerry Talmer of the New York Post calls Annulla “one bangup 90 minutes of theatre…I don’t know when I’ve been stimulated as much by anything on the living stage.”
Still Life is composed of interviews with a Vietnam War veteran with PTSD, the pregnant wife he physically and emotionally abuses, and the mistress who finds herself entranced by his passion and violence. This Obie Award-winning play is “a powerful affair, full of passion and viability…Mann offers no easy answers or pat solutions, she simply invites us into these three characters' lives” ( Los Angeles Times ).
Execution of Justice follows the trial of the former policeman who shot San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and openly gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1979. Called “thought-provoking…a taut courtroom drama” ( New York Times ), Execution of Justice “is theatre reasserting its claim on the country’s moral conscience” ( Washington Post ).
A Requiem is “a particularly all-American tragedy” ( New York Times ) as Mann interviews those involved in the largely unreported 1979 massacre of unarmed demonstrators by members of the Ku Klux Klan, Greensboro police force, and FBI. Forbes calls Greensboro “a provocation, a potent exposé of the ‘less-than-human thing’ which fuels the politics of hate and injustice in America.”
268 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1996
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April 25, 2025Cutting is for Still Life
By Emily Mann
By Emily Mann
March 26, 2017
Testimonies: Four Plays by Emily Mann is a collection of docudramas written from first-person testimonials, court documents, interviews, and news footage. Plot isn't necessarily relevant to these plays principally because Mann builds each play around a series of elongated dramatic monologues. On the whole, the premise for each play is intriguing, but prior knowledge seems essential. For example, Execution of Justice is a stunning, pathos-riddled play about the trial of Dan White, the former San Francisco politician responsible for the murders of City Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. I am familiar with Milk's life and death, so this play resonates in ways that Greensboro: A Requim, a play about the shooting of several protestors by the Ku Klux Klan, does not. I suspect the power of each play is the way in which they activate prior knowledge while offering alternative narratives for stories of abuse and corruption.
It's hard to say if the plays collected in Testimonies: Four Plays offer anything new or merely reaffirm what I already know. I enjoy her approach to each subject, but I also wonder how relevant each play remains the farther we get from the events she dramatizes.
It's hard to say if the plays collected in Testimonies: Four Plays offer anything new or merely reaffirm what I already know. I enjoy her approach to each subject, but I also wonder how relevant each play remains the farther we get from the events she dramatizes.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews