Synopsis

The Debutante Ball

$13

Beth Henley

Published by Dramatists Play Service

2 Male 5 Female

This stunning comic drama, set in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, begins the morning of Teddy Parker's debutante ball, that archetypal phenomenon in Southern culture known as a maiden's "coming out"

Teddy's mother, the beautiful and formidable Jen Parker Turner, has willed this event into being. Ostracized from polite society ever since she was accused and - under much speculation and gossip - acquitted of the murder of her wealthy husband, Jen has been looking to Teddy's coming-out gala to revive her and her family's reputation

As the play unfolds, various secrets emerge: an unwanted pregnancy, an illicit romance, self-mutilation, mendacity and murder. Polite facades crumble and ugly truths twist and polka across the ballroom floor

This is a play about the price of secrets and the power that love and lovelessness hold over our lives

" The Debutante Ball is the blackest of the Mississippi-born playwright's comedies and probably her best" ~ USA Today

" The Debutante Ball is also blessed with Henley's striking gifts for outrageous theatricality, off-the-wall dialogue and sharply observed character" ~ The Register

"What is special about [Henley] as a writer-the sudden bursts of simple emotion, the capturing of joy wrapped up in calamity and the comic obsessions with grotesquerie and bodily functions is abundantly evident" ~ LA Herald Examiner

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