Synopsis
The first-ever talking picture, The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, is a smash hit and suddenly every actor needs a voice. Three New Yorkers leave the vaudeville stage and head West to cash in with an elocution school, but with very little experience themselves! Once there, they find clueless ingénues, powerful studio moguls, and neurotic screenwriters, however success isn’t as easy as misadventure abounds the trio!
Act I
Scene One A room in the West Forties, New York
Scene Two A pullman car, en route to Los Angeles
Scene Three The Gold Room of the Hotel Stilton, Los Angeles
Act II
Scene One The reception room of Glogauer Studios
--------- Intermission ---------
Act III
Scene One A set on the Glogauer Studio lot
Scene Two A pullman car, en route to New York
Scene Three The reception room of Glogauer Studios
There's Gold in them thar Silver Screens!
Once in a Lifetime was based on the excitement happening in Hollywood during the advent of talking pictures. In 1929, Hart wrote tis play in collaboration with George S. Kaufman as a result of the instinance of Sam H. Harris; he would only produce it if Hart rewrote it with the more experienced playwright, Kaufman.
THS experienced the start of the Hart and Kaufman collaboration (and the launch of the famous duo) in the spring of 2018 with Act One by James Lapine, the biographical play about Moss Hart. Audiences were witnessed to the accounts of Hart’s failures followed by the numerous rewrites of this very play. The Act One experience is what led the current THS Drama Club officers to select Once in a Lifetime for this season!
