A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE

Everything You Touch

Full-Length Play, Dark Comedy  /  6w, 2m

Sheila Callaghan

Everything You Touch is a viciously funny look at the struggle to find an identity that's more than skin deep.

Everything You Touch

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  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    6w, 2m
  • Duration
    Duration
    120 minutes (2 hours)
  • SubGenre
    Subgenre
    Not Applicable
  • Audience
    Target Audience
    Adult
Accolades
Accolades

  • WINNER -2015 Ted Schmitt Award for world premiere of an outstanding new play, Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle 

    Sheila Callaghan is the 2007 recipient of the Whiting Award for Drama

Details

Summary
Victor is a ruthless fashion designer in the 1970s at the top of his game. Esme, his glamorous protégé and muse, is pushed aside when an ordinary Midwestern woman inspires Victor to make his artistry accessible to the masses. A generation later, a woman grappling with a healthy dose of self-loathing must wrestle her own family demons to find her way through the world of fashion that won’t give a woman her size a second look. Skipping back and forth in time, Everything You Touch is a viciously funny look at the struggle to find an identity that's more than skin deep. 
History

Everything You Touch premiered in co-production with Rattlestick Playwright's Theater in New York City in February of 2015 and the Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena, California in April of 2015 under the direction of Jessica Kubzansky.

Keywords
Performing Groups

VICTOR - A 70's fashion designer / figment of Jess's imagination
ESME - Victor's muse
LOUELLA - Cheerful, Southern tourist in Victor's studio
JESS - A self-loathing computer programmer
LEWIS - Jess's co-worker
MODEL 1 - Clothing model for Vincent, also acts as personification of Jess's subconscious and various inanimate objects
MODEL 2 - Clothing model for Vincent, also acts as personification of Jess's subconscious and various inanimate objects 
MODEL 3 - Clothing model for Vincent, also acts as personification of Jess's subconscious and various inanimate objects 

  • Time Period Present Day, 1970s
  • Features Elaborate/High-Volume Costumes
  • Duration 120 minutes (2 hours)
  • Cautions
    • Strong Language

Media

REVIEWS

"No matter the topic at hand, Ms. Callaghan's writing, whether in plays like 'Roadkill Confidential' and 'That Pretty Pretty,' or the cable series 'Shameless' and 'The United States of Tara,' is florid and highly flammable.... Themes and fixations crash together like vehicles in a multicar pileup." - The New York Times, Read More

"They paint with broad and colorful strokes in Callaghan's new fantastical play....each eye-catching contour proves to be much more than simple decoration, driving decisively toward the play's bold dissection of beauty, self-worth, and human connection." - TheatreMania, Read More 

"You may have seen your share of makeovers, but nothing like the one Sheila Callaghan inflicts on her heroine in Everything You Touch, her lushly written dark comedy world-premiering at Boston Court Performing Arts Center." - Los Angeles Times, Read More 

"...[Sheila Callaghan's] new Everything You Touch may be the breakthrough work Callaghan's admirers have been waiting for: A brash, even commercial, elaboration of her universal themes in their most complex and daredevil manifestations yet...this thought-provoking play takes its themes of thwarted intimacies to exciting, dramatically vivid, places to impart fresh discernment to the alienation playing within and without us all." - Hollywood Reporter, Read More  

RELATED ARTICLES ON BREAKING CHARACTER 

Beauty and Standards: EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH 
by Coryn Rose Carson
July26, 2016


Videos

  • Rattlestick Theatre Cast on Everything You Touch youtube thumbnail

    Rattlestick Theatre Cast on Everything You Touch

Licensing & Materials

  • Minimum Fee: £55 per performance plus VAT when applicable.

Scripts

Available Formats:
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Authors

Sheila Callaghan

Sheila Callaghan
Sheila Callaghan's plays have been produced and developed with Soho Rep, Playwright's Horizons, Yale Rep, South Coast Repertory, Clubbed Thumb, The LARK, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, New Georges, The Flea, Woolly Mammoth, Boston Court, and Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre, ...
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