Strawhead is a play by American writers Norman Mailer and Richard Hannum about Marilyn Monroe. The play is an adaptation of Mailer's 1980 book Of Women and Their Elegance, an imagined memoir told in Monroe's voice. Strawhead takes place in New York City during the last few days of Monroe's life in August 1962. During this period, she is alone with her memories, most of which revolve around her time living in New York City. The play is primarily composed of a collection of imagined interviews, that never took place, between Monroe and Mailer during Monroe's last hours. The play made its off-Broadway debut in January 1986, with Mailer's wife Norris Church in the cast and his daughter Kate Mailer in the role of Monroe. Kate Mailer also appeared on the April 1986 cover of Vanity Fair as the Monroe character in Strawhead. Development In 1967, Norman Mailer had adapted his 1955 novel The Deer Park for an Off Broadway production. Thirteen years later, in 1980, Norman Mailer's agent informed Mailer that Richard Hannum, then a Manhattan roommate of Godspell creator John-Michael Tebelak, American Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Stephen Hunter, and film director and composer Tom O'Horgan were interested in a stage adaptation of Mailer's 1980 book, Of Women and Their Elegance. Mailer agreed to work on the play since it would be a pleasant diversion: "Novel writing is a lonely business. Lonely business quickly becomes grim. In theater you're working with people. The climate is a lot warmer." The stage adaptation was Mailer's second foray into the theater behind the adaptation of The Deer Park. The play takes its title from an FBI code name for Monroe. According to Mailer, Strawhead represents "(Marilyn's) ironic, whimsical, tortured way of thinking." Mailer sees the fictional Monroe character in the play as "having an immensely dialectical mind; no sooner does she have a thought, than she comes on its opposite. That's the way life presents itself to her - in contrasts and sudden shifts." In January 1981, Hannum and Hunter were listed as the producers of the play and O'Horgan was listed as the director. At that time, Mailer had hoped that the play would open on Broadway in the spring 1981 or the fall 1981, but had not yet cast the Monroe character. In addition, Hannum still was working on the play construction and Mailer was working on the play dialogue