urgent! two plays on Broadway

Is Dana H. A Room?

In today's edition of Real Bummer News, two excellent plays currently running in rep on Broadway are closing early. I want you to see them before they go away!

🚶🏽 DANA H. by Lucas Hnath, adapted from interviews with Dana Higginbotham conducted by Steve Cosson, directed by Les Waters

DANA H. tells the harrowing true story of a woman who was held captive for five months in a series of Florida motels. Now, her own words have been reconstructed for the stage by her son, Tony-nominated playwright Lucas Hnath.

It's hard to describe what Dana H. accomplishes. The mechanics of the play are so unusual: Actress Deirdre O'Connell lip-syncs to the recording of Dana Higginbotham's narration of her abduction and captivity by a white supremacist. O'Connell doesn't speak a word for the entire play, and it’s one of the most Herculean performances I’ve seen. It's almost possible to process Dana H.’s horrifying story this way—no violence is staged, though what you imagine is so often more vivid than what a restaging can achieve.

There are so many different lenses through which to view the production, but to me, it's an elegant staging of trauma, and the strange dissociation it creates between body and mind. The most astonishing thing that Dana H. pulls off, though, is its generosity. Somehow, in the act of telling this story, the artists have created something that bends toward hope.

🚶🏽watch in person at The Lyceum
💰 tickets from $39 + fees*
❗️ through November 13
💉 must show proof of vaccination and wear a mask for the whole show

🚶🏽 IS THIS A ROOM conceived and directed by Tina Satter

It’s 2017. Air Force intelligence specialist Reality Winner has just been surprised at her home by the FBI. She’s accused and charged with leaking evidence of Russian interference in U.S elections. Her interrogation gets brought to life on stage in IS THIS A ROOM, conceived and directed by Obie Award winner Tina Satter.

Is This A Room stages the verbatim transcript of the FBI interrogation of Reality Winner, who leaked classified evidence about Russian interference in US elections to The Intercept. It has a rapid-fire pace and overlapping, chaotic dialogue layered on top of abstracted staging that highlights the gender dynamics at play and the surrealism of the entire situation; the entire idea of "homeland security." It's tense, almost a thriller, and isn't quite like anything I've seen before. I confess to being uncertain what, precisely, to take away from the production. The performances, particularly that of Emily Davis as Reality Winner, are extraordinary—more than worth the price of admission. I'm still thinking about them two weeks after seeing the play. Maybe in another several weeks, I'll be able to be more articulate about the production. But by that point, the play will have closed.

🚶🏽watch in person at The Lyceum
💰 tickets from $39 + fees*
❗️ through November 14
💉 must show proof of vaccination and wear a mask for the whole show

tl;dr

I'm obsessed with the idea of multiple discovery, which describes how scientific discoveries are often made independently, at the same time, by two people or groups with no knowledge of each other. Sometimes, it seems like brilliant ideas come from a giant collective consciousness that individuals occasionally get to tap into briefly, and these two plays sharing the unlikeliest of stages feels like some kind of example of that. Go see them both before they close November 14.

*Limited number of general rush tickets will be available daily for both shows for $35 at the Lyceum Theatre box office when it opens for that day's performance only.