THE CUTTING EDGE: AN OFF-BROADWAY PLAY READING SERIES 2024
ISAAC'S EYE BY LUCAS HNATH JUNE 22 & 23 4PM THE BYERS STUDIO, TOWN HALL THEATER To understand light and optics better, young Isaac Newton inserted a long needle “between my eye and the bone, as near to the backside of my eye as I could.” Why take such a risk? Lucas Hnath reimagines the contentious, plague-ravaged world Newton inhabited in ISAAC’S EYE, exploring the dreams and longings that drove the rural farm boy to become one of the greatest thinkers in modern science.
The Best We Could By Emily Feldman SEPTEMBER 7 & 8 THE BYERS STUDIO, TOWN HALL THEATER
In this funny, wise, and heartbreaking debut from Emily Feldman, a daughter’s road trip with her father becomes a theatrical journey across more than just state lines. Though 36-year old Ella has nearly given up on life, she agrees to accompany her father Lou on a long-distance trip to adopt a rescue dog. Guided by a narrator called Maps and interspersed with memories and phone calls from Ella's mother, Peg, their journey reveals hard truths as their pasts slowly rise to the surface.
Searingly insightful... Cosmic questions that lurk beneath everyday routines seem to creep in from the periphery... the loudest being, is this really all there is to life? There is more to Feldman’s layered investigation of consumer capitalism, kinship and gendered power imbalances, which she brings to light throughout The Best We Could in the manner of family secrets: There’s no escaping the ones you love, or the truth.” – The New York Times
The Case for the Existence of God By Samuel D. Hunter NOVEMBER 9 & 10 THE BYERS STUDIO, TOWN HALL THEATER
A Case for the Existence of God unfolds in a cubicle where two seated people unexpectedly choose to bring one another into their fragile worlds. Keith, a mortgage broker, and Ryan, a yogurt plant worker seeking to buy a plot of land that belonged to his family many decades ago, realize they share a "specific kind of sadness." At this desk in the middle of America, loan talk opens up into a discussion about the chokehold of financial insecurity and a bond over the precariousness of parenthood. With humor, empathy and wrenching honesty, Hunter commingles two lives and deftly bridges disparate experiences of marginality. “[A] must-see heartbreaker of a play.” – The New York Times Critic’s Pick! “Heartbreaking... though A Case makes the connection between personal and societal calamity more explicit than ever – can it be just an accident that it’s set in Twin Falls? – it may also be the purest example yet of Hunter’s approach to playwriting as an experiment in empathy.” – The New York Times
