BETH
HENLEY
Beth Henley is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and professor. Her plays include Crimes of The Heart (Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play), The Wake Of Jamey Foster, The Miss Firecracker Contest, Am I Blue, The Lucky Spot, The Debutante Ball, Abundance, Control Freaks, Impossible Marriage, Family Week, Ridiculous Fraud, The Jacksonian, Laugh, and The Unbuttoning.
Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally and translated into twelve languages. Ms. Henley's screenplays include Crimes of The Heart (Academy Award nom.), Nobody’s Fool, The Miss Firecracker Contest, and David Byrne’s True Stories. Ms. Henley is the recipient of the 1998 American Theatre Wing Award for Distinguished Achievement in Playwriting, a Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist for Crimes of The Heart and Ridiculous Fraud; a Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award (2000); a New York Stage and Film honor (2007), an ATHE Career Achievement Award (2010), the Cleanth Brooks Medal (2013), and the American Theater Award at the William Inge Festival (2017). Originally from Mississippi, Ms. Henley now lives in Los Angeles and serves as the Presidential Professor at LMU/LA.
NEW PLAYS BY
BETH HENLEY
THE UNBUTTONING
Dollarhide Star, a worn out salesman, climbs to the top of a blue mountain to sell a lightning rod to a young, lone woman, Net March. Each holds a host of secrets that unbutton, unravel, and reveal dark truths. Both are murderers and both are victims. Delusion and lies lead to seduction, violence, and a broken forgiveness. A surreal romance. A Blue Ridge Fantasia.
EXPOSED
The play takes place in Los Angeles on the winter solstice. It is the late 1990s. Jane and Mike are affluent parents of a troubled child, Stuart. Reb and Billy grew up together in a foster home and are now fending for themselves in the sprawling world of Los Angeles. Pye is a disgraced journalist. She is having an affair with Mike while trying to get him to hire her for his paper. Pye is also having an affair with Billy, the foster kid. All of these characters are struggling to survive the longest, darkest night of the year. All of them are lost.
