The American Clock

An HB Ensemble Production

Playwright: Arthur Miller

Director: Austin Pendleton

Lightning: Chris Dallos Stage Manager: Shiraz Biggie Musical Director: Anne Phillips Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Costume Design: Patricia Adshead, Catherine Siracusa

The American Clock was performed September 27th – October 15th, 2007

Synopsis: The play employs a series of vignettes and short scenes, with the actors portraying some fifty-two characters, to capture the sense and substance of America in the throes of the Great Depression. The central figures are the Baums, a wealthy family whose fortune has vanished in the stock market crash, but their story is amplified and illuminated by brief glimpses of other lives; a farmer who has lost all in the dust bowl; a prostitute who exchanges her favors for dental work; a white Southern sheriff in thrall to a black short-order cook; a young man who dreams of success on Tin Pan Alley, etc. Moving deftly from scene to scene, some funny, some movingly poignant, the play becomes a deeply affecting evocation both of a tortured time in American history and of the indomitable spirit of the people who survived and prevailed in the face of unaccustomed adversity.