An ensemble stands within a bright green rectangular floor design onstage.

2009 · PS122

Evanston: A Rare Comedy

A woman in a floral dress stands beneath a fluorescent light facing seated audience members.

EVANSTON: A RARE COMEDY begins with the disappearance of a teenage girl in deepest suburbia and ends when a meeting of The Evanston Women’s Book Club goes horribly awry. In between, a transgender student dreams of death, a housewife dreams of Mexico, an economics professor has an affair with a Whole Foods check-out clerk, and the financial crisis rages on. The latest show from the Wolf 359 team – director Michael Rau and writer/performer Michael Yates Crowley – takes a chainsaw to language, convention and pretension to create a new kind of American story-telling: raw, sexy and painfully funny. Inspired by the words of Psalm 137 and the streets of Evanston, Illinois, A RARE COMEDY asks: how can we sing a song of joy in this strange land?

A lone performer stands in silhouette beneath a fluorescent light on a black stage.

Presentations

2009: PS122 · New York City
2013 (development): National Playwrights Conference, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center · Waterford, Connecticut
August 3–5, 2009: HERE Arts Center · New York City

Playwright: Michael Yates Crowley

Director: Michael Rau
Scenic Design: Sara Walsh
Lighting Design: Derek Wright
Costume Design: Melissa Trn
Sound Design: Asa Wember
Fight Direction: Al Foote III

Performer: Bodine Alexander
Performer: Chas Carey
Performer: Leah Karpel
Performer: Michael Yates Crowley
Performer: Anna Margaret Hollyman
Performer: Devon Jordan
Performer: Kate MacCluggage
Performer: Sam West

Press

Evanston: A Rare Comedy

“The actors of troupe Wolf 359 manage to avoid the potential pitfalls of simplifying their stereotypical characters and create instead a hilarious, (at times unnervingly on-point) portrait of yearning Evanston citizens whose oblivion proves to be their most dangerous threat. This play definitely deserves an audience.”

Evanston: A Rare Comedy

“The production achieves something remarkable in that it’s a black comedy that isn’t cynical. It manages to satirize us without alienating us. The characters, in spite of their monstrous self-involvement and inability to process their feelings in healthy ways, seem sincere and all too real.”