Set in an NYC rehearsal room, DEAR JANE journeys into the life of a passionate artist, Julie, who explores the many divergent paths of her past. From her fractured relationship with her identical twin Jane, to love affairs, questionable parenting skills, and her time as a political activist — she strives for something beyond our boundaries, reaching for art as the ultimate expression of meaning. July 18 – August 26, 2017; Opening night is set for July 26, 2017

The impulse to make art about one’s life story has fueled many great artists, but getting it right is a challenge. Dear Jane, a very nice and hardworking play written by Joan Beber and directed by Katrin Hilbe, is tangled in the weeds of the details of its story. I can sense, I really can, how much the production wants me to feel with it, but self-retrospection does not necessarily beget avenues of connection. Dear Jane’s structure has a playwright named Julie, who seems to stand in for playwright Joan Beber herself, constructing the play Dear Jane, made up of events from her life. The form, then, acts as a metaphor for her confronting those events, and that clarity is welcomed. Yet the events themselves, jumping from one era to another, and never lasting for more than a minute, don’t coalesce into something substantive. We are left longing, at times overwhelmed, with a lot of details and not much understanding. The short scenes don’t help this. I understand short scenes are in vogue — it makes, like, anything feel sharp and Broadway — but quick moments between characters create more the idea of a feeling than the feeling itself. Because of the short scenes, we never really got tha …Read more