Spinning into Butter

What happens when conflicting emotions inhabit the same space? When a new vocabulary is devised to disguise the same old thoughts? In this barbed satire of political correctness, Rebecca Gilman’s provocative characters spin a web of their own, revealing the latent racism that may lurk beneath the porcelain veneer of a liberated conscience.

Library Journal

Gilman has received numerous awards for her plays, which include Glory of Living. Boy Gets Girl, which had its premiere in Chicago on March 16, 2000, considers what happens when a blind date turns into a living nightmare. This brilliant and thought-provoking new drama takes us into the life of Theresa, a New York City magazine reporter who suddenly finds herself being terrorized by a stalker after she rejects him. In Spinning into Butter, an unprecedented incident of racism on the campus of idyllic Belmont College, VT, forces Sarah Daniels, the liberal-minded dean of students, to confront her own demons of prejudice and fears while also exposing the shallow minds and insincerity of the other administrators. (An ironic plot twist reveals the significance of the play s title.) Here, Gilman challenges us to think about the dangers of racism and political correctness. Her skillful use of dialog to create character and move the plot is evident in both of these new plays, which are highly recommended for modern drama collections at public and academic libraries. Howard Miller, St. Louis Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Rebecca Gilman was born in Trussville, Alabama, a small town outside Birmingham. She briefly attended Middlebury College in Vermont in the early 1980s and has lived in Chicago since 1994, after she received a graduate degree in theater from the University of Iowa.