alphabetical author index

Travelling Light

  • Nicholas Wright
  • Full Length Play, Drama, 20th Century
  • 9M, 4F
  • ISBN: 9781848422476

A funny and fascinating tribute to the Eastern European immigrants who became major players in Hollywood's golden age.

  • Full Length Play
  • Drama

  • Time Period: 20th Century
  • Target Audience: Adult
  • Set Requirements: Bare Stage/Simple Set

  • Performance Group:
  • Community Theatre
A funny and fascinating tribute to the Eastern European immigrants who became major players in Hollywood's golden age.

In a remote village in Eastern Europe, around 1900, the young Motl Mendl is entranced by the flickering silent images on his father's cinematograph. Bankrolled by Jacob, the ebullient local timber merchant, and inspired by Anna, the girl sent to help him make moving pictures of their village, he stumbles on a revolutionary way of story-telling. Forty years on, Motl - now a famed American film director - looks back on his early life and confronts the cost of fulfilling his dreams.

How had a twenty-two-year-old pretentious layabout made a discovery that would elude every other cinematic pioneer for years to come?

Nicholas Wright's play Travelling Light was premiered at the National Theatre, London, in 2012.

REVIEWS:

"A love-letter to the movies and an appealingly intelligent evocation of the Jewish folk culture."

 The Guardian

"Charming and funny... inventive and amusing."

 Telegraph

"Nicholas Wright is one of my favourite dramatists... acutely fresh and sharply researched plays that nonetheless have very distinctive finger marks on them."

 Independent

Premiere Production: National Theatre, London, 2012.
  • Casting: 9M, 4F
  • Casting Notes: Plus 1 boy.

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A funny and fascinating tribute to the Eastern European immigrants who became major players in Hollywood's golden age.

In a remote village in Eastern Europe, around 1900, the young Motl Mendl is entranced by the flickering silent images on his father's cinematograph. Bankrolled by Jacob, the ebullient local timber merchant, and inspired by Anna, the girl sent to help him make moving pictures of their village, he stumbles on a revolutionary way of story-telling. Forty years on, Motl - now a famed American film director - looks back on his early life and confronts the cost of fulfilling his dreams.

How had a twenty-two-year-old pretentious layabout made a discovery that would elude every other cinematic pioneer for years to come?

Nicholas Wright's play Travelling Light was premiered at the National Theatre, London, in 2012.

$24.95