Bernard Slade

Grand Theatre Collection (University of Guelph)

Linda Stewart

Road Show Theatre Company Archives

Through 26 years, two wars, six kids, seven Presidents, lowering morals, raising consciousness and shifting values.for one fantastic week-end a year they laugh, lust and love.

Same Time, Next Year

A Novel

Amy and Michael Ruskin are celebrating their fifteenth wedding anniversary and their upcoming divorce. Michael is a reformed television writer turned playwright. Amy is competitive but inwardly insecure The play is structured as a series of flashbacks. After the opening scene, the play goes back in time ten years and recreates the various special occasions which make up marriages: anniversaries, weddings, funerals, play openings and other catastrophes And, after all is said and done, the couple ends as they began on their fifteenth anniversary, dancing to a recording of "Love Is Here to Stay"

A Play in Two Acts

Special Occasions

Full Length, Comedy Characters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set One of the most popular romantic comedies of the century, Same Time, Next Year ran four years on Broadway, winning a Tony Award for lead actress Ellen Burstyn, who later recreated her role in the successful motion picture. It remains one of the world's most widely produced plays. The plot follows a love affair between two people, Doris and George, married to others, who rendezvous once a year. Twenty-five years of manners and morals are hilariously and touchingly played out by the lovers. "Delicious wit, compassion, a sense of humor and a feel for nostalgia."-The New York Times "Genuinely funny and genuinely romantic."-The New York Post

Same Time Next Year

Same Time, Next Year is arguably the most successful romantic comedy ever to grace the stage. Most people think that it was written by Neil Simon. It wasn't, of course. It was penned by one of Canada's most successful playwrights and scriptwriters, Bernard Slade, who recounts this and many other hilarious anecdotes in his infectiously readable memoir, Shared Laughter. Born to British parents in central Canada, Slade split his childhood between Britain and Canada. Trained as an actor, he began with the Crest Theatre in Toronto before striking out for Hollywood where, as a writer, he left his mark on some of the most successful TV comedy of the era. In his Burbank years, Slade was responsible for the development and writing of The Partridge Family, The Flying Nun and Bewitched, among many others. But in 1974, with the surprise hit of Same Time, Next Year, Slade returned to his first love - writing for the stage. He went on to write Tribute and a number of other successful (and some unsuccessful) plays. Here, in Shared Laughter, he gives us the highs and lows of production and fame, the people he has known and his fascinating insights into the art of writing comedy. We meet Jack Lemmon and Ellen Burstyn, Alan Alda and Bea Arthur. We are taken to the nail-biting jitters of a Broadway opening and shown the brutal opportunism that is Hollywood. Along the way, we are treated to witty and wicked anecdotes of people and their foibles, famous and obscure. Great show-biz memoirs rarely come along. This is one of them.

Memories of Same Time, Next Year; The Partridge Family; Tribute; The Flying Nun; Bewitched; and Other Laughing Matters

Shared Laughter

"[Scottie's] everyone's friend, nobody's hero, and a great womanizer who's managed to live over fifty years without taking anything seriously ... But at fifty-one, he finds the script's been rewritten as a tragedy: he is fatally ill ... Scottie's one concern is to make friends with his son, for everyone else adores Scottie, including his ex-wife, his friend and boss, and his doctor"--Page 4 of cover.

Tribute

A Thriller in Two Acts

Fatal Attraction

A romance between a playwright and a collaborator is rekindled after ten years during which time they both experienced many changes. 3 acts, 7 scenes, 2 men, 4 women, 1 interior.

A Comedy in Three Acts

Romantic Comedy

Story of a housewife and an accountant who meet for an affair one weekend a year for 26 years, and of the changes both of them encounter in their lives.

A Romantic Comedy

Comedy / 1m, 1f / Int. A memorable evening with two of the world's favorite characters, this sequel to Same Time, Next Year continues the saga of an extramarital affair conducted one weekend a year into the last quarter of the twentieth century. Maturing into their late sixties, Doris and George share the inevitabilities of aging and the convolutions of parenting and grandparenting as they redefine love outside of their annual tryst and romance within it. Hilarity and tenderness are perfectly b

A Sequel to "Same Time, Next Year"

Same Time, Another Year

One of the most popular romantic comedies of the century, Same Time, Next Year ran four years on Broadway, winning a Tony® Award for lead actress Ellen Burstyn, who later recreated her role in the successful motion picture. It remains one of the world’s most widely produced plays. The plot follows a love affair between two people, Doris and George, married to others, who rendezvous once a year. Twenty-five years of manners and morals are hilariously and touchingly played out by the lovers.

Bernard Slade

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