Middletown by Will Eno

Middletown explores the universe of a small American town. As a friendship develops between longtime resident John Dodge and new arrival Mary Swanson, the lives of the inhabitants of Middletown intersect in strange, funny, and compelling ways.

Bio:

Playwright Will Eno recently completed the Residency Five Fellowship at the Signature Theatre, which premiered his play Title and Deed in 2012, and The Open House, in 2014 and Wakey, Wakey in 2017. Will’s play The Underlying Chris premiered at 2^nd Stage Theatre in October 2019, directed by Kenny Leon, and The Plot premiered at Yale Repertory in November 2019, directed by Oliver Butler. The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it won a Drama Desk Award, was named USA Today’s “Best Play on Broadway,” topped the The Guardian’s 2014 list of American plays, and was included in The N.Y. Times’ “Best Theatre of 2014.” The play was recently included in “25 Significant Plays of the last 25 Years,” in The New York Times. The French premiere, Juste Les Jones, will be directed for the Paris stage by documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The Open House won the 2014 Obie Award, the Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, and a Drama Desk Award, and was included in both the Time Out New York and Time Magazine Top 10 Plays of the Year. Title and Deed was on The N.Y. Times and The New Yorker magazine’s Top Ten Plays of 2012. Middletown, winner of the 2011 Horton Foote Award, premiered at the Vineyard Theatre and subsequently at Steppenwolf Theater and many other American Theaters and universities. The Canadian premiere, at The Shaw Festival in 2017, received a rapturous response from critics and audiences and was remounted in 2018 in Toronto. Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. It was performed by Michael C. Hall in a sold-out revival at the Signature Theater in the fall of 2018. The L.A. premiere was performed by Rainn Wilson at the Geffen Playhouse in 2016, and a film was made from those performances, directed by Will and Oliver Butler. In spring 2019 Will wrote the book for the hugely successful ad campaign Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical, which also starred Michael C. Hall. In March 2020 Gnit, Will’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, directed by Oliver Butler, was performed four times before closing down for 18 months. Performances will resume at Theatre For A New Audience in November 2021. www.willeno.com