Found a Peanut

by Donald Margulies

The setting is the backyard of a Brooklyn tenement on the last day of summer vacation, where a group of children aged five to fourteen (portrayed by adult actors) are at play. Finding a dying bird they decide to have a ritual burial, which leads to the discovery of a bag of money, probably buried by a reclusive miser who had recently died in the adjacent building. This discovery, in turn, results in squabbles and bitterness among the children, as the microcosm of their games gradually yields an awareness of greed, betrayal and violence elements of life heretofore unknown to them but, regrettably, so much a part of the grownup world that they are approaching. In a sense the play, with deft irony and lively humor, marks the coming of age of the children, as the carefree innocence of youth is sobered by the emergence of emotions that, while not yet fully comprehended, will have a profound effect on their lives in the years to come.

Genres: Plays

72 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1984

About the author

Born 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.

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for my theatre class and really didn’t like it. I didn’t like any of the characters or the plot. Only the ending was good.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short. Juvenile characters coming of age story. Tightly written. Nice piece.