Bruce Norris Selected Works

In downstate Illinois, four men convicted of sex crimes against minors share a group home where they live out their lives in the shadow of the crimes they committed. A man shows up to confront his childhood abuser—but does he want closure or retribution? This gripping and provocative new play zeroes in on the limits of our compassion as it questions what happens when society deems anyone beyond forgiveness.

Bruce Norris presents a hilarious comedy in which an actor decides to end his career, burn his headshots and resumés, and become a serious furniture maker.

Clybourne Park spans two generations fifty years apart. In 1959, Russ and Bev are selling their desirable two-bedroom at a bargain price, unknowingly bringing the first black family into the neighborhood (borrowing a plot line from Lorraine Hansberry'’s A Raisin in the Sun) and creating ripples of discontent among the cozy white residents of Clybourne Park. In 2009, the same property is being bought by a young white couple, whose plan to raze the house and start again is met with equal disapproval by the black residents of the soon-to-be-gentrified area. Are the issues festering beneath the floorboards actually the same, fifty years on?

Bruce Norris'’s excruciatingly funny and squirm-inducing satire explores the fault line between race and property. Clybourne Park is the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the winner of the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play.

In The Low Road, a fable of free market economics and cut-throat capitalism, a young entrepreneur sets out on a quest for wealth with priceless ambition and a purse of gold. Premiered at London's Royal Court in the spring of 2013.

Everyone’'s family has a secret or two. The Vanishing Twin follows a 19th century governess to a dark mansion in an obscure Germanic country. There, she unlocks a forbidden door and reveals a family’'s twisted history.

At a typically charmless nursing home, the resident troublemaker, Woody, is being confronted by a visitor from his past—a past he can barely remember.

Bee is a young woman who believes she has the uncanny ability to see the future, and maybe even alter it. With the click of a television remote, we loop through time in this dark, funny play about a woman bent on reinventing her own destiny—and possibly the world.

Domesticated dives into the conflagration of gender, power, sexuality and politics that emerges in a private relationship after a public humiliation. In this prescient play, Judy and Bill Pulver find their marriage thrust into the public eye by scandal. As told by Norris, their story is wickedly funny, deeply serious and anything but predictable.

At a beachside apartment complex, a group of friends gathers for their regular evening of food, drink, drugs and partner-swapping. When Chris and Kristy attempt to become the newest members, the evening does not go as planned. The artichoke dip grows cold as the party devolves into a territorial battle over mating privileges. Does sex ruin everything? And what is the purpose of monogamy? Bruce Norris's comedy explores the eternal struggle for power, status and getting laid.

In Purple Heart, Carla, a Vietnam War widow deep in drink and depression, is living with a troubled son and her controlling mother. One day a stranger arrives at the door, a soldier with one hand who is seemingly connected to her late husband and comes to offer condolences to the grieving family. The soldier's mysterious visit is solved in graphic and bloody detail at the end of the play. Norris uses these quirky and flawed characters to provide a humorous yet very dark view of war and the human condition.