Don Nigro is a prolific American playwright,
who has penned over 100 dramatic works, from monologues to
full-length plays. These works have been performed all over
the United States and Canada, as well as in London and Budapest.
Nigro has been the James Thurber Writer in Residence at Thurber
House in Columbus, has twice been a finalist for the National
Play Award, and has taught at five different universities.
Don Nigro’s Cinderella Waltz was published in 1978,
and was first produced by the Indiana State University Summer
Repertory Theater in Terre Haute, Indiana. In his notes on
the play, Nigro lays out the history of the Cinderella story,
distinguishing between Charles Perrault’s sanitized
version and the earlier, more brutal version written by the
Brothers Grimm. Another literary slant is Shakespeare’s
King Lear, a telling of the story from the father’s
point of view. As Nigro himself takes up the story, themes
such as social inequality and personal growth emerge.
In this play, Rosey is given a choice – to accept the
role the traditional fairy tale assigns to her, thus fulfilling
her childhood fantasy to become a princess, or to make a much
darker and, to the other people in her world, perfectly insane
choice, to investigate the more ambiguous and dangerous world
of adulthood.
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