THE GRAVEDIGGER’S LULLABY
Written by Jeff Talbott*
Directed by Jenn Thompson*
Featuring: Jeremy Beck*, Jeffrey C. Hawkins*, Ted Koch, and Lisa Velten Smith.
Wednesday June 3rd at 7PM
Thursday June 4th at 7PM
Baylen is a gravedigger, a working-class man trying to keep food on the table in a world where other people make the rules. There’s a baby who can’t sleep at home, and plenty of holes to be dug. But a chance encounter with a rich young man may bring the hope of a different life. What will Baylen do? THE GRAVEDIGGER’S LULLABY is a bold and gripping new contemporary drama about a time that has passed. And how little things have changed.
FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT:
I have always had a fascination with gravediggers. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s a profession that doesn’t really exist anymore. I mean, it does; but not in the way it once did. It’s more like a construction job now – machines help with all the work, and like everything in the modern world, it’s a business. But there was a time when there was a guy who, with his bare hands, was in charge of helping your loved one into their final home. And that is fascinating to me. So I did some research, and sat down, and here we are. What I (hopefully) found was that some conversations that we think are completely ours today are the same things we’ve been talking about as human beings for as long as we’ve been talking. And my job, as always, is to get out of the way and let the people talk.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT:
JEFF TALBOTT graduated with honors from the Yale School of Drama and is a member of TACT. His play The Submission was the inaugural recipient of the Laurents/Hatcher Award in 2011 and was produced Off-Broadway by MCC Theater; it also received the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for New American Play in 2012 and has since been produced all over the country. His plays A Public Education and All the Stars in the Midnight Sky were in newTACTics in 2014 and 2013, respectively. A Public Education was a finalist for the 2015 O’Neill Playwrights Conference, and had a developmental workshop at Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City. He lives in New York City and writes musicals with Will Van Dyke. They have completed one musical (Imagine Harry) and are currently working on their second (Wintersong). They will be releasing an EP of their songs called A View of the River this fall.
