In Purple Heart, Carla, a Vietnam War widow deep in drink and depression, is living with a troubled son and her controlling mother. One day a stranger arrives at the door, a soldier with one hand who is seemingly connected to her late husband and comes to offer condolences to the grieving family. The soldier's mysterious visit is solved in graphic and bloody detail at the end of the play. Norris uses these quirky and flawed characters to provide a humorous yet very dark view of war and the human condition. Loosely based on a true story, The Infidel tells of a charismatic and well-respected state Supreme Court justice who is faced with disciplinary action after his out-of-control affair with a young Latina junior staffer. He confers with his friend and attorney as he examines the consequences of his behavior and tries to judge the most difficult case of his life-his own. With dark irony and sharp, cutting dialogue, Bruce Norris explores sexual obsession and the legislation of human behavior.

Purple Heart and The Infidel: Two Plays

Literature & Fiction

Norris, Bruce

Dramas & Plays

Northwestern University Press

In this brief but staggering two-act, playwright Norris demonstrates his skill at drawing out the dark truth that lurks beneath the surface of the perfect” family. His crackling satire takes dead aim at the self-satisfied, left-leaning American upper-middle class and its many self-delusions.
 On a winter afternoon, Kelly and Clayan attractive, prosperous, seemingly happy couple with a four-year-old daughter and a newborn babymust explain to a visitor the events of the previous Thanksgiving, on which, so it seems, someone or something had been gnawing at the avocados on their kitchen table. In the course of this holiday gatheringattended by Clay’s mother, a well-meaning but clueless first-grade teacher who spouts pointless liberal bromides; his brother, a plastic surgeon with a nihilistic streak and a taste for martinis; and his brother's girlfriend, a sexy Balkan immigrant with a love for all things American (racism included)the recent past is unearthed along with revelations of failed marriages, fraternal hatred, infidelity and venereal disease, in the form of their daughter’s nasty genital infection. And it’s a comedy. As the story is gradually unfolded to their visitor, a Muslim cab driver, his relationship to the events becomes increasingly clear, as does the emptiness of the family’s supposed benevolence and sensitivity.
 With its crashing emotion and cutting humor, this vicious dissection of the comfortable progressive life lays bare the lies that people use to feel righteous even as they veer off a genuinely ethical path.

The Pain and the Itch: A Play

The Unmentionables: A Play

Clybourne Park (Acting Edition for Theater Productions)

Dramatist's Play Service

The Low Road: .

Clybourne Park spans two generations fifty years apart. In 1959, Russ and Bev are selling their desirable two-bedroom at a bargain price, unknowingly bringing the first black family into the neighborhood (borrowing a plot line from Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun) and creating ripples of discontent among the cozy white residents of Clybourne Park. In 2009, the same property is being bought by a young white couple, whose plan to raze the house and start again is met with equal disapproval by the black residents of the soon-to-be-gentrified area. Are the issues festering beneath the floorboards actually the same, fifty years on? Bruce Norris's excruciatingly funny and squirm-inducing satire explores the fault line between race and property.
Clybourne Park is the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the winner of the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play.

Clybourne Park: A Play (Tony Award Best Play)

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

The Actor Retires

L.A. Theatre Works

Winner, Best Play, Evening Standard Awards 2010. An acerbically brilliant satire that explores the fault line between race and property in a Chicago neighborhood first in 1959 and revisited in 2009.

Clybourne Park

Nick Hern Books

The newest play from Bruce Norris, author of the international hit Clybourne Park, which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best New Play, among other honors. In The Low Road, a fable of free market economics and cut-throat capitalism, a young entrepreneur sets out on a quest for wealth with priceless ambition and a purse of gold. Premiered at London's Royal Court in spring 2013.

The Low Road

In downstate Illinois, four men convicted of sex crimes against minors share a group home where they live out their lives in the shadow of the offenses they committed. A man shows up to confront his childhood abuser--but does he want closure or retribution?
 Bruce Norris's new play Downstate zeroes in on the limits of our compassion and what happens when society deems anyone beyond forgiveness.

Downstate

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