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This fall, the award-winning South Pasadena Drama Department will tackle Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Will Eno’s award-winning MIDDLETOWN. Eno, who was
nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his play Thom Pain (based on nothing) and called by
Christopher Isherwood of the New York Times “Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation,” said he wanted to write “something that was a statement about what life feels like, to me, on earth.”
Middletown had two celebrated productions at the Vineyard Theater in New York and the
Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago (starring Tracy Letts) and was the 2010 winner of the Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play.
Middletown is a deeply moving and very funny play exploring the universe of a small American town. The kind of town where, as one character puts it, “the main street is called Main Street. And the side streets are named after trees. People come, people go. Crying, by the way, in both directions.”
As the lives of its archetypal residents intersect – a cop, a mechanic, a librarian, a pregnant new arrival, and many others – we learn their stories, both funny and tragic, and increasingly see their connection to each other. We see friendships develop, old grudges tested, generosity of new neighbors, a birth, and a death. We even visit the town’s most famous resident, an astronaut, in space.
“This is a play unlike any we have ever done,” said Nick Hoffa, South Pasadena High School
drama director. “It jumps seamlessly from hilarious oddball moments to shattering sorrow almost instantaneously – in a way that feels almost like magic.”
Middletown (directed by Nick Hoffa, with technical direction by James Jontz) will be performed five times: Nov. 4, 5, 11, and 12 (Friday, Saturday) all at 7:00PM. There is a Saturday matinee on Nov 12 at 2PM. Little Theater, South Pasadena High School, 1401 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena, Calif. General admission is $15. Tickets go on sale the week of October 27, 2022 (check SouthPasDrama.com/middletown for updates), and may be purchased online at sphsasb.org and at the door. Middletown has mature subjects and themes and parental discretion is advised for under 13.
