Event

"LUV" by Murray Schisgal

The Actors Theatre of San Francisco presents Murray Schisgals glorious comedy LUV.

What playwright Schisgal has done is to turn the theatre of the absurd upside down.
-Time Magazine

It all takes place on a suspension bridge, where three friends turn their existensial woes into a neuroses
of Vaudevillian proportion. There is Harry Berlin a beatnik who has sunk so low that honest beatniks would disown him. He has no future except to jump off the bridge and is about to do so when Milt Manville comes along and intervenes. Milt and Harry turn out to be college classmates. As Harry, in his rags, reveals the depth of his despair Milt, a picture of prosperity, is all sympathy and then confesses that he to is full of frustration, because his wife wont divorce him so he can marry the woman he loves. Then Milts wife, Ellen, appears and a triangle of the absurd ensues that in the tradition of all great comedy revels in alienation, the loss of identity, inability to communicate, self expression and the meaninglessness of it all.

About the Play: Originally staged in 1964 starring Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach , Alan Arkin and directed
by Mike Nichols it was the second longest running comedy of its era.
About the Playwright:
Murray Schisgal has had an extensive career, writing plays, novels, anthologies, science fiction, and play producing. Born Nov. 25, 1926, in New York, Schisgal would receive a Tony Award nomination for his play Luv. Other plays include Jimmy Shine, All Over Town, and The Typists, and he has been the writer and editor of several play anthologies. He has a star on the Playwrights Sidewalk for Off-Broadway Achievement in New York. In addition to being a screenwriter on Tootsie, Schisgal has produced several films and television programs, including A Walk on the Moon and The Love Song of Barney Kempinski. He has been nominated for an Oscar, Golden Gfor an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA.