THE STORY: An American woman about to turn fifty is standing on a high dive at a pool in a hotel in Greece. She is on vacation with her husband and eleven-year-old son. Her son has requested that she jump off the board. She, being terrified of heights, has managed to climb to the platform and now clings to the railings as she tries to will herself to leap into the blue Greek air and down into the water of the pool. As she stands on the board, she considers her life. She begins with the experience of her vacations themselves. At this point, she and her family are in Greece exactly at the moment that CNN has announced Athens as the hottest city in the world, one degree hotter than Cairo. Other vacations have included cold snaps in Florida that caused the fish to freeze in the ocean; the honeymoon in Hawaii during a hurricane season; waking up in Mexico to an 8.1 earthquake and so on. She includes other adventures as well: time spent in VISTA; work in dinner theatre with Dorothy Lamour and Mickey Rooney; an appearance on the $25,000 Pyramid show with Peter Lawford as her partner; the walk across a rope bridge in the French Alps at dusk, etc. The key ingredient to this one-woman show, is that it begins in the lobby at half hour. The performer invites audience members (35 people) to participate in the show by reading lines from the script (sides). The lines are delivered from their seats and range from one word to several pages of dialogue. The show then begins with a conversation with the audience about the participation. The involvement of the audience provides the opportunity for them to experience the point of the play: the willingness to take risks and jump in. This is a one-woman show with a very large cast.

"The show involves the audience as well. There are thirty-four people involved…and though it's a risky gimmick…it works!" - NY Times. "HIGH DIVE is well worth the plunge. This brief and light-hearted look at Ayvazian's misadventures…is an engaging and often hilarious show from beginning to end." - NY Daily News. "The narrative covers what goes through her head on the high dive board…Will she or won't she jump off? Refracted backward and forward in her routine, this tiny moment reveals her entire life, a chronicle of comic disaster. And the surprise ending gives the laughter an unexpected deep pathos." - Village Voice. "…it's fun…like meeting a flamboyant friend for a cup of coffee." - Wall Street Journal.

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Publisher	Dramatists Play Service Inc.
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Category	Plays
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Medium	Softcover
ISBN13	9780822218319
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Dimensions	197x134