A Play In The Present

The play Women of a Certain Age is a relevant performance- down to the very moment. Last night, Richard Nelson's play about a fictional family waiting for the results of the 2016 election premiered in real time.

The Public Theater Graphic

Richard Nelson is a Tony Award-Winning American playwright. A few of his most notable works include Chess, James Joyce's The Dead, and Hyde Park on Hudson. Mr. Nelson has also worked with The Royal Shakespeare Company and served as the chair of the playwriting department at The Yale School of Drama. This year he wrote and directed a trilogy of plays that engage audiences on a whole new level. This trilogy is known as The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family.

So what does it mean to experience a play in "real time?"

Each play in The Gabriels trilogy opened in the night it was set. To accomplish this, Mr. Nelson was not finished writing these plays until shortly before they were performed in front of its first live audience. He updates lines and aspects of the show such as news events, the weather, and neighborhood activities. Mr. Nelson makes these changes in his shows up until the day the show is performed. What this does is create an intimate and real-time performing arts experience for the audience.

Michael Lee Photo of The Public Theater

The first production of The Gabriels trilogy was Hungry, opening on February 27, 2016. What Did You Expect, the second play, opened on September 10, 2016, and Women of a Certain Age premiered on election day. The latest play will run until December 4 Off-Broadway at The Public Theater.

The trilogy follows the Gabriels, a family living in Rhinebeck, N.Y. The three shows occur in the family's kitchen while they prepare a casual meal. This starts as an easy conversation between close family members in the comfort of the center of their home. The show goes beyond family conversation to resonate with audience members and reverberate the thoughts and feelings of Americans.

Michael Paulsen with the New York Times spoke with Mr. Nelson about The Gabriels trilogy, and he explained, "I would hear conversations about the country- and how people's lives related to the country- in my living room with friends, and overhear them in restaurants and on the train, but not on the news or on television or from comedians... I thought theatre was a good place to do that."

The Public Theater Photo of The Gabriels

The Gabriels is not the first of Mr. Nelson's real-time plays. He wrote a series known as The Apple Family Plays. They are 4 plays from 2010 to 2013 written either about an election or a significant historical anniversary. Mr. Nelson says he likes to write plays set in real time because "It allows my characters and the audience to be in a very similar place, and feel like they are connected before even a word is spoken, because they're both going through the same event."


A play so relevant in the moment couldn't hold its relevancy past that moment... could it? Though it may seem like these shows could be limited to a short shelf life, Mr. Nelson has found that his works resonate with audiences beyond borders and past election time. "When I wrote the first Apple play," Mr. Nelson says in his interview with The New York Times, "I wrote a note in the program that I considered it a disposable play, and I was convinced of that. But we took them on a tour of Europe, and what I learned was a lesson that most writers learn at a much earlier age: The more specific one is, the more universal one can be."