Elephant's Graveyard

Winner of the 2008 Keene Prize for Literature
Winner of the 2008 David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award

Characters: 10m, 3f, flexible casting (Roles may be played by any race or gender except when specified.) / Drama

Elephant's Graveyard is the true tale of the tragic collision of a struggling circus and a tiny town in Tennessee, which resulted in the only known lynching of an elephant. Set in September of 1916, the play combines historical fact and legend, exploring the deep-seated American craving for spectacle, violence and revenge.

"The script-based on a true story about a traveling circus that, in 1916, stumbled into gory disaster in a muddy Tennessee town-is, like the best art, microscopically specific with echoes that radiate outward across time. It conjures a world with its own atmosphere and terrible internal logic. It's mesmerizing... symphonic in its emotional variations on a tragic theme. Elephant's Graveyard buzzes with truth about the consequences of misunderstanding, the invisible but enormous gap between artists and their audiences, and the infernal beauty of vaudeville." -The Stranger, Seattle

"A theatrical masterpiece." - Columbia City Paper

"The most striking production in the (NSDF) festival." - Times of London

"Deeply moving...has the audience in stitches at the open and tears at the close." - TheSunCoast.com