Lenny & Lou

World Premiere, fall 2004 at the
Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, DC.
Read the rave reviews!

Nominee

Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Play
as part of the Helen Hayes Awards

Also nominated as Outstanding Resident Play

LENNY & LOU, a dark comedy about sex, sibling rivalry and perverse maternal love. The play explores debilitating familial relationships, co-dependency, marital obligations, adultery, Alzheimer's and elder abuse in a provocative and wildly comic manner. BareBones (workshop) by The Lark Play Development Center, February 2001. Also, a finalist in the 2003 HBO Comedy Festival.

Howard Shalwitz and Jennifer Mendenhall

Standing: Carolyn Michelle Smith, Heidi James
Seated: Todd Wall, Suzanne Toren, David Mogentale
Photo by Alison Cherry

LOU: Maybe I should just kill myself? There's no hope! And when there's no hope, existence doesn't pay. Not worth it.

LENNY: Even the lowest animal doesn't kill himself.

LOU: That's cause the lowest animal doesn't have a fuckin brain and has no concept of low or high or nothin. A rat doesn't know it's a rat. A rat only knows it's hungry and it's gotta eat. That's it. If I was a fuckin rat, I'd be okay. But I'm not. I'm a human being and human beings aspire to more. A lot more. That's why I gotta kill myself.