Spinning into Butter: A Play

“Splendid . . . A play of blistering force . . . [Gilman] is poised to have a major impact on the American theater.” ―Chris Jones, Variety

Set on a college campus in Vermont, Spinning into Butter is a new play by a major young American playwright that explores the dangers of both racism and political correctness in America today in a manner that is at once profound, disturbing, darkly comic, and deeply cathartic. Rebecca Gilman challenges our preconceptions about race relations, writing of a liberal dean of students named Sarah Daniels who investigates the pinning of anonymous, clearly racist letters on the door of one of the college's few African American students. The stunning discovery that there is a virulent racist on campus forces Sarah, along with other faculty members and students, to explore her feelings about racism, leading to surprising discoveries and painful insights that will rivet and provoke the reader as perhaps no play since David Mamet's Oleanna has done.

Spinning into Butter had its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in May 1999 and opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York in April 2000.

“An extraordinarily fresh, eloquent, and candid new play . . . by a writer of surprising gifts.” ―Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune

“This is a dangerous, searching, brilliant play, probing the self-inflicted wounds of a self-righteous civilization.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“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 [ Boy Gets Girl and Spinning into Butter].” —Library Journal

© 2025 Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Ebook): 9781429998444

Release date

Ebook: 16 April 2025