Two Mailers at Edgemar Center for the Arts

Two Mailers is a new play by Ronald K. Fried inspired by "The Big Empty," a book of conversations between legendary author Norman Mailer and his youngest son, the journalist and playwright John Buffalo Mailer. The father-son dialogue covers politics, sex, pot, and morality—and ranges from the personal to the political. The play moves back and forth in time between the 2002 father-son sessions and John Buffalo's present-day encounter with a former girlfriend who's interviewing him for an article about his father's legacy. As John Buffalo is forced to defend his father's controversial life and work, we flash back to intimate moments between John Buffalo and his aging father. We also see the most storied—and notorious--incidents in Norman Mailer's life, including outrageous moments from his campaign for Mayor of New York City; his encounter with feminists in New York's Town Hall; and his embattled press conference following his testimony in the murder trial of John Henry Abbott, a man Mailer helped to free from prison. Along the way, we hear excerpts from Mailer's major works and personal letters.