“As the play opens, the audience meets two very different New York City women. Callie (Flavia Pallozzi) is a sophisticated on-air traffic reporter who stayed in the Big Apple after graduating college. Callie knows all the good restaurants and maintains a somewhat messy friends-with-benefits arrangement with her longtime friend George (Shane Novoa Rhoades). She lacks real passion for any of it, assuming that existential boredom is a tradeoff for the sensory stimulation of urban life.
Bright, excited and freshly relocated from St. Louis, Sara (Kylie Anderson) is a sheltered free spirit ready to leave her mark on New York. A committed public school teacher who has already tried and rejected heteronormative suburban life with her ex-fiancé Peter (Joe Faifer, in a dual role), Sara is looking for something more. After a rather pedantic establishment of their friendship rooted in cat-sitting, it’s clear that Sara and Callie have simmering chemistry.
The structure of the play’s narrative fully supports the organic, but complicated development of the women’s relationship. Their mutual attraction becomes apparent, then the action and timeline flip to a violent incident months later, which explicitly calls upon the integrity, resilience and heretofore undefined commitment of both characters. As the production moves back and forth between the nascent days of Sara and Callie’s attraction, and the “after,” which must necessarily change everything, we can follow the halting emotional and spiritual investment the characters make in one another, finding it as relatedly imperfect as our own unpredictable experiences.”
becky sarwate 