The Arsonists
by Jacqueline Goldfinger

Name: The Arsonists
Brand: Jacqueline Goldfinger
SKU: 9780573706981
Rating: 3.84 (1 reviews)

The Arsonists Book Cover — The Arsonists Cover

Highlights

Female

Male

75 mins Present Day Multicultural Casting Interior Set Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes

Synopsis

Arsonist is a two-character play with music that explores grief, death and dying through the lens of a father-daughter arson team in the Everglades.

It’s a provocative journey from grief to redemption that delves into the primal bond between parent and child, and explores whether that bond can ever truly be broken.

Press Reviews

"Haunting, and atmospheric, Jacqueline Goldfinger’s compelling new play… is not your usual family piece… nor is it anything like a conventional ghost story."
— The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Jacqueline Goldfinger’s spellbinding new play… put me in mind of a kind of gender-reversed Sam Shepard… There is a sense here that the playwright honors a history of theater (the Greeks, Shepard, also Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra), but it’s also contemporary. Best of all, Goldfinger’s voice is distinctly, wonderfully her own."
— Philadelphia Magazine

"Spellbinding… Hypnotic… Exquisitely written… The opening scene… would be equally at home in a Cormac McCarthy novel or a hardboiled HBO series. And I mean that as a serious compliment… it explores the fine lines separating parent and child, life and death, earthliness and eternity, letting go and moving on, profanity and poetry, the grotesque and the sublime."
— Juneau Empire

"Haunting and primal… The Arsonists is an impactful, spine-chilling meditation on the age-old themes of life and death, the power that nature holds over humanity, and the ties that bind father to daughter."
— DC Metro Arts

"A heartbreaking modern myth… Arsonist shoulders enormous emotional weight. That’s a testament to Goldfinger’s carefully balanced array of music and metaphor, as well as the raw emotional expression of the actors… Arsonist burns as fiercely as the name suggests, making it well worth attending. Fair warning, though: if, like me, you’re the father of a daughter, you will need to hug her after this play, even if that means waking her up a bit too far past her bedtime."
— ArtWave

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
H 50s, male, any race, plays guitar, sings a littleAuthor’s casting note: The Everglades has a mixed population in terms of race, ethnicity and size. Think flexibly and broadly on casting. Also, while it needs to be a father-daughter tale for the story to work, the performers have identified as male, female or non-binary. Trans artists have also played the roles. What’s important for the story to work is that there is a clear parent-child dynamic that is identified in the play as “father” and “daughter.”	female	50s	50s, male, any race, plays guitar, sings a littleAuthor’s casting note: The Everglades has a mixed population in terms of race, ethnicity and size. Think flexibly and broadly on casting. Also, while it needs to be a father-daughter tale for the story to work, the performers have identified as male, female or non-binary. Trans artists have also played the roles. What’s important for the story to work is that there is a clear parent-child dynamic that is identified in the play as “father” and “daughter.”
M 20s, female, any race, plays guitar, sings a little	female	20s	20s, female, any race, plays guitar, sings a little