All the Stars in the Midnight Sky

 

All the Stars in the Midnight Sky
by Jeff Talbott

Directed by Jenn Thompson
Music by Alex Burtzos
Featuring: Maïté Alina, Cynthia Harris, Todd Lawson, Tracy Middendorf, and Myra Lucretia Taylor

All The Stars in the Midnight Sky is the story of two very different unplanned pregnancies. Kelsey and Trish have some big questions to answer, and not just the ones about babies. But a lot can happen in nine months, and if you let it, a lot can change. A comic drama about mothers and daughters, and maybe, just maybe, finding happiness where you least expect it.

From the Playwright:

I can’t tell you what it’s about, because my answer is just my answer, and will inevitably be disappointingly different than yours. But I can tell you how it started. Sometimes it’s a character. Sometimes it’s an event. And sometimes it starts with an image I just can’t shake. And if the image gets stuck deep enough in my brain, my only choice is to write about it and try to figure it out.

That’s what happened here. It was this image of three women sitting on a bench. Three women of three different ages, three mothers, three daughters, sitting on a bench, waiting. It got stuck deep in there.

Because there’s this thing about mothers and daughters. It’s different than the mother-son thing (just ask Sophocles). It’s . . . complicated. How does it start, this complicated relationship? And how does it get passed on? Is it a birth legacy, and if it is, is it thicker than blood? Thicker even than that?

Between you and me, I honestly don’t know. But I had to sit down and try to figure at least some of it out. Because I just couldn’t shake it.

About the Playwright:

JEFF TALBOTT (Playwright) has written five full-length plays and two one-acts. He graduated with honors from the Yale School of Drama. His play The Submission was the inaugural recipient of the Laurents/Hatcher Award in 2011 and was produced off-Broadway by MCC Theater, directed by Walter Bobbie. It also received the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for New American Play in 2012. The play is published by Samuel French, was a semi-finalist for the 2010 O’Neill Playwrights Conference, and was in the final round of consideration for the 2010 New Play Summit at the Denver Center. He is also the co‑author of Critical Moment (with Stephen Kunken), which was a semi-finalist for the New Play Festival at Denver Center Theatre, and a section of which was a finalist for the Heideman Award for best 10-minute play at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville. His one-acts For Nate and Molly and Tender were both given world premiere productions by the Yale Cabaret.