THE HUMANS

By Stephen Karam

Families are complex, to say the least! In Stephen Karam’s The Humans we witness one family’s relationships and dynamics as they jostle, wheel, and stomp between two floors of a New York Chinatown duplex on Thanksgiving day. Park Square’s production brings an additional layer of nuance with the two daughters, Aimee and Brigid, cast as Korean adoptees.

As a Korean adoptee whose parents are Caucasian, it’s gratifying to finally see a family onstage that looks like my own. Although not addressed in the dialogue, the underlying adoptee stories come through. For instance, Aimee has ulcerative colitis, a painful inflammatory bowel disease. For adoptees, having a medical issue of any kind can bring up many painful, unanswered questions. Did someone in my birth family have this same ailment? Could I have done something about it had I known sooner? There is a specific loss and grief that is felt when one is completely disconnected from their biological relatives with no health or history roadmap at all.

Throughout the show, we see how close the Blake family is with one another and how disappointment, fear, and grief influence this closeness. At the beginning of rehearsals, we talked about how adoption could have contributed to this tight family bond. Questions like: were Deirdre and Erik unable to have children biologically? Did they try for a long time? Was there an intense desire to have children, and how much did this desire play into adopting from Korea? Again, none of these questions are addressed in the play itself, but they deepen the play in a different way than if Aimee and Brigid were their biological children.

Casting the two Blake daughters as Korean adoptees is a new concept, but director Lily Tung Crystal did not just drop people of color into the cast without any deliberation. Minnesota has the highest concentration of Korean adoptees of any state, and by portraying the Blakes as a multi-racial adoptee family, this production allows the audience to ask deeper questions, while giving the resident adoptee community in the Twin Cities visibility and representation on stage. When I hear people say, “Oh, that character couldn’t be related to that character - they look nothing alike,” I want to invite them to dinner at my parents’ house. Adoption does not define the Blake family, but it exists quietly among all of their complexities.

KATIE BRADLEY Dramaturge

Oh, friends! I am filled with such hope and joy as we come together to continue Park Square’s tradition of summertime mysteries. In the midst of all the uncertainties we have shared, it is strangely reassuring to know that, in the end, tonight’s riddle will be solved!

When we come together to make theatre, we offer our imaginations, our generosity of spirit, and our willingness to be in community in ways that are truly present. We know, after all, that we are not really on a remote island like the one where Holmes and Watson takes place. Rather, we come together to laugh, to wonder, to shed a tear, and to lean into the story unfolding before us. This is balm for our socially isolated and culturally divided souls. For a brief moment we are together, making worlds in our mind’s eye, and allowing our flights of fancy to run free.

So, let’s have some fun and let our imaginations and spirits expand! In our summer camps, young artists are inventing fantastical worlds together while creating friendships and discovering how much they can imagine into existence. I hope you will find the same joy as we join together to solve the mystery of what has happened to the great detective!

I am so thrilled to be back at Park Square with you.

MARK FERRARO-HAUCK Executive Director, Park Square Theatre Artistic & Exec. Director, SteppingStone Theatre hauck@parksquaretheatre.org

Park Square Theatre excites generations of artists and audiences through vibrant theatre that elevates our community’s multiplicity of voices.

SteppingStone Theatre for Youth ignites belonging, generosity, mastery, self-advocacy, and inspiration by creating art with young people to share with the world.

Synopsis

A stunning portrayal of the human condition told in real time. At Thanksgiving, the Blake family gathers at the run-down New York apartment of Brigid Blake and her boyfriend, Richard. Brigid’s parents, Erik and Dierdre, have driven in from their home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, along with Erik’s elderly mother, Momo, while their other adult daughter, Aimee, is visiting from Philadelphia. Together they attempt to focus on the positive while wrestling with basic human challenges including aging, illness, and economic insecurity.

The Humans was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play.

Stephen Karam is the Tony Award-winning author of The Humans, Sons of the Prophet and Speech & Debate. For his work he’s received two Drama Critics Circle Awards, an OBIE Award and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Stephen recently directed his first feature film, a rethought version of The Humans for A24 films, to be released in 2021. He wrote a film adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull starring Annette Bening, which was released by Sony Picture Classics. His adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard premiered on Broadway as part of Roundabout’s 2016 season. Recent honors include the inaugural Horton Foote Playwriting Award, the inaugural Sam Norkin Drama Desk Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, a Lucille Lortel Award, Drama League Award, and Hull-Warriner Award.

Stephen teaches graduate playwriting at The New School. He is a graduate of Brown University and grew up in Scranton, PA.

The

video and audio recording of this performance by any means is strictly prohibited.

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

†Member, USA Union 829

Park Square Theatre is a member of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theatre.

THE HUMANS had its world premiere in November 2014 at American Theater Company, Chicago, Illinois (PJ Paparelli, Artistic Director)

The Original Broadway Production of THE HUMANS was produced by Scott Rudin, Barry Diller, Roundabout Theatre Company, Fox Theatricals, James L. Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, Roy Rufman, Daryl Roth, Jon B. Platt, Eli Bush, Scott M. Delman, Sonia Friedman, Amanda Lipitz, Peter May, Stephanie P. McClelland, Lauren Stein, and the Shubert Organization; Joey Parnes, Sue Wagner and John Johnson, executive producers

Commissioned and Originally Produced by Roundabout Theatre Company, New York, NY (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director; Harold Wolpert, Managing Director: Julia C. Levy, Executive Director, Sydney Beers, General Manager)

By Stephen Karam