alphabetical author index

Marjorie Prime

  • Jordan Harrison
  • Full Length Play, Science Fiction, Drama, New Millennium/21st Century, The Future
  • 2M, 2F
  • ISBN: 9780573704888

In this richly spare, wondrous new play, Jordan Harrison explores the mysteries of human identity and the limits -- if any -- of what technology can replace.

  • Full Length Play
  • Science Fiction, Drama

  • Time Period: New Millennium/21st Century, The Future
  • Target Audience: Adult
  • Set Requirements: Interior Set

  • Performance Group:
  • Blackbox / Second Stage /Fringe Groups, Professional Theatre

  • Accolades:
  • 2015 Pulitzer Prize Finalist
It's the age of artificial intelligence, and 85-year-old Marjorie -- a jumble of disparate, fading memories -- has a handsome new companion who's programmed to feed the story of her life back to her. What would we remember, and what would we forget, if given the chance? In this richly spare, wondrous new play, Jordan Harrison explores the mysteries of human identity and the limits -- if any -- of what technology can replace.

REVIEWS:

"Jordan Harrison's elegant, thoughtful and quietly unsettling drama... keeps developing in your head, like a photogenic negative, long after you have seen it... At some point, you realize that it's been landing skillfully targeted punch after punch, right where it hurts."

 The New York Times

"An elegant study of memory as both escape and prison. In Anne Kauffman's perfectly chilled yet cozy staging, the human parts of Harrison's smart, lovely play are built to last."

 Time Out New York

"Jordan Harrison's play... has all the hallmarks of the best science fiction; it's clever in conceit, alive with humor, surprising in its turns, and terribly haunting by the time the lights go out."

 The New Yorker

"Marjorie Prime... is primarily concerned with something eternal: the way our humanity is shaped and warped by the mysterious ebbs and flows of memory."

 Los Angeles Times

"Memory is an essential element of life -- crucial to thought, feeling, progress, identity. But it also comes into play with particular power and meaning after someone who has been loved dies. And it is this tension between life and death -- with memory functioning as connective tissue -- that animates Jordan Harrison's subtly shattering play, Marjorie Prime."

 Chicago Sun-Times

Premiere Production: Marjorie Prime premiered at the Mark Taper Forum/Center Theater Group in Los Angeles in September 2014. The production was directed by Les Waters.
  • Casting: 2M, 2F
  • Casting Attributes: Ensemble cast, Parts for Senior Actors

MARJORIE - 85.
WALTER - early 30s.
TESS - 55. Marjorie's daughter.
JON - 55. Marjorie's son-in-law.