Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810132575 ISBN 13: 9780810132573

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2015

Grand Concourse is a play by playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actor Heidi Schreck. It tells the story of Shelley. Having dedicated her life to religious service, Shelley runs a Bronx soup kitchen with unsentimental efficiency. When Emma—a rainbow-haired college dropout—arrives to volunteer, her volatile mix of generosity and self-involvement throws Shelley’s life into chaos. She brings a needed jolt to the place, helping a long-time client toward a new job, but her energy also proves unsettling. Even as Emma’s behavior grows steadily more erratic, Shelley still wants to believe in her, despite the mounting evidence that she shouldn’t.

Shelley must finally ask herself how well she really knows the people she sees every day, how much she can trust them, and what she can and cannot forgive. With both humor and generosity Grand Concourse asks big questions about the limits of both compassion and forgiveness.
 

About the Author:

Heidi Schreck is a playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actor. He plays include Creature, There Are No More BigSecrets, and The Consultant. Schreck is a former Page 73 Playwriting Fellow and Sundance and Soho Rep artist. As an actor she has also performed extensively at theaters such as Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre (Shakespeare in the Park), Manhattan Theatre Club, Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, The Foundry, Clubbed Thumb, The Women's Project, The Roundabout, Williamstown, Berkeley Rep and Center Theatre Group. Heidi also worked as staff writer and story editor on Nurse Jackie. Heidi was the 2014 Roe Green Award Winner from the Cleveland Playhouse.

Review:

"Matters of faith and friendship, and secrets and lies, are blended into the stew in Grand Concourse." —New York Times 

"Schreck is seriously concerned with values and morals—Catholic values and morals, specifically—and the surprising conclusions she draws as the lights fade are not only unforgettable but entirely forgivable."—Huffington Post

"Set in a Bronx soup kitchen, Grand Concourse is something of a morality tale. But while Heidi Schreck’s new play is about big issues like faith and forgiveness, it has such a light, empathetic touch that it never feels like a lecture. You may need tissues by the end, though." —New York Post