“… A RIVETING, WELL-WRITTEN ENSEMBLE DRAMA.”
“…WITTY AND FREQUENTLY POIGNANT; AN HONEST AND RESONANT SCRIPT… THIS PLAY IS A ROUSING SUCCESS.”
“[MR. AUER] HAS DELIVERED A FANTASTIC BITTERSWEET PLAY ON THE FALLACIES OF PASSION.”
The Physics of Joy
The Physics of Joy tells four interwoven stories of love and humanity; three of them in real-time during a summer night at O’Donnell’s Ale House, and one told 23 years in the future. It is love as experienced by physicist Joy O’Donnell, her father Evan, her auntie Rach, her Northern Irish grandparents Liam and Maggie, and the rabble of bar patrons which surround them.
The Physics of Joy is a remix of two of my older plays; neither completed to my satisfaction. The first script, Odes, was produced as part of the 1999 Seattle Fringe Festival, and later as part of Middlebury College's 1999-2000 season in Middlebury, Vermont. The second script, Gabriel/Joy, was a Grand Finalist in the 2002 Richard Hugo House New Play Competition, and had a staged reading in 2005 at The Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle, Washington.
The Physics of Joy is an ensemble script for 12 actors (6f, 6m) with a running time of approximately 105 minutes. The show features an original song, When the Lights Go Up, written by my brother, Jon Auer (The Posies, Big Star), performed live at the end of the show.
For copies of the script, please contact the author at nathan@nathanauer.