Speech & Debate @ SPACE Gallery

2009-03-17T12:12:00.001-04:00

RESERVE YOUR TICKETS NOW!

2009-01-26T23:26:00.016-05:00

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March 28 & 29 and April 4 & 5 @ 8pm
Tickets: $10 / $8 (members and students)

Plus special First Friday Late Show
April 3 @ 10:30pm
Tickets: Pay what you can!

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To reserve: call 1-800-838-3006
or visit
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/60606

About the Play

2009-01-26T00:25:00.010-05:00

Three teenage outsiders in Salem, Oregon are reluctantly thrust together by their shared knowledge of a teacher who preys on his male students. Howie's been seduced by him in an online chat room, Solomon's become obsessed with revealing the truth in the school newspaper, and Diwata wants revenge on the teacher for not casting her in the school musical. They go about the serious matter of unmasking the truth in a ridiculous way: by founding the school's first Speech & Debate club and trying to bend its competitive performance categories to their needs. Their attempt somehow becomes a musical about Mary Warren (from Arthur Miller's "The Crucible") traveling in time to counsel a gay, teenage Abe Lincoln, and then spirals into an interpretive dance number set to George Michael's "Freedom," replete with nude body suits... As the stakes get higher, and the performance art flies fast and furious, the trio's secrets become currency, and the play spins great humor out of that torturous teenage moment when just "being yourself" turns into a minefield where you might end up destroying your self.

Reviews

2009-01-24T02:00:00.000-05:00

Speech & Debate premiered off-broadway at the Roundabout Underground, where it garnered great reviews... Like these:

"Mr. Karam’s observations are shrewd... A plot description doesn’t hint at how funny and cliché-free this brilliantly performed little show is... The play’s real accomplishment is its picture of the borderland between late adolescence and adulthood, where grown-up ideas and ambition coexist with childish will and bravado... The triumph of this production is that we never feel we’re being educated, just immensely entertained." -Caryn James, The New York Times

"Stephen Karam's savvy comedy about three teenage outsiders grappling with sexual secrets and drawn together via the Internet is... bristling with vitality, wicked humor, terrific dialogue and a direct pipeline into the zeitgeist of contemporary youth." -David Rooney, Variety

"The best explanation for how much "Speech & Debate" can get away with is probably that it earns enormous credibility with its audience by being flat-out funny... Much of the credit goes to young playwright Stephen Karam, who has an outstanding ear for how young people talk and whose comedy was selected as the first production of Roundabout Underground." -Associated Press