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Mark Schultz

EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HELEN OF TROY

  • Full Length
  • Drama

Teenage Charlotte's beautiful mother is dead. Turning for comfort to the story of Helen of Troy, Charlotte is convinced that beauty, desire and fame can help her bring her mother back and punish the world that took her away in the first place. Getting beauty tips from her popular friend, seeking career advice on how to be a porn star from a guidance counselor who may or may not be having an affair with her, and searching for love from the football jock who barely even knows she exists, Charlotte finds herself searching in fantasy for what she cannot find in reality and destroying the life of the only friend she may have had in the process. But in the depths of pain, she comes to discover an unexpected grace.

Inspired by Euripides but with its sights set firmly on contemporary America, Everything Will Be Different: A Brief History of Helen of Troy is an unsettling examination of complacency culture and the politics of beauty.

Available in Library

Cast Requirements

2 Women
4 Men

Production and Development History

2005--Soho Rep and True Love Productions, New York, NY
2005--Actor's Touring Company, UK Tour
2006--Capital T Theatre, Austin, TX
2007--Mad Cat Theatre, Miami, FL
2008--Lynx Performance Theatre, San Diego, CA
2008--Stray Cat Theater, Phoenix, AZ
2009--Playground Collective, Wellington, New Zealand
2010--Steep Theatre Company, Chicago, IL
2010--Echo Theatre Company, Los Angeles, CA
2012--Proxy Theatre, San Antonio, TX
2015--Catastrophic Theatre, Houston, TX

Honors

2005 Newsday Oppenheimer Award
2006 Kesselring Prize

Publisher

Dramatists Play Service
Oberon
Felix Bloch Erben (German title: Alles wird anders. Eine kurze Geschichte der Schönen Helena)

Press

"Bang on the money portrait of adolescent angst…provocative delight from start to finish." —Daily Telegraph (UK)

"One of the sassiest and savviest pieces of new writing for some time…an astonishing piece of work on every level." —Herald (Scotland)

"For the last 20 minutes, a climax of awful pity, I think the entire audience was actually holding its breath. But despite staying as still as possible, "Everything Will Be Different" still hunted us down and slayed us, every one." —The New York Sun

"It takes an uncommonly sensitive playwright to probe the psyche of such a troubled child and an unusually gifted actress to play her sympathetically. Scribe Mark Schultz and youthful thesp Laura Heisler pull off this high-wire tightrope act with gravity and grace in "Everything Will Be Different," a production that's all the more satisfying for being so dangerously funny." —Variety

"This play pulls no punches in its portrayal of cruelty, and there are points when you want to look away, which is not a criticism at all. Mr. Schultz is a sensitive, ambitious writer .... —The New York Times