The History of the Play

The Science of Leaving Omaha was commissioned by Washington University in St. Louis, where author Carter Lewis was the playwright-in-residence for over two decades. Lewis began writing The Science of Leaving Omaha in 2019 for a planned production in the university’s 2020-2021 season. Due to the pandemic, the production was cancelled and PBD producing artistic director William Hayes invited Lewis to workshop the play virtually at PBD. After two successful readings here, Hayes scheduled the play for the 2022-2023 season. In the interim, the play was produced at Washington University, but the PBD production is the professional world premiere.

In an interview for the Washington University newspaper, Lewis said about the play: “I wanted to write about working-class kids. Government and corporate sectors have abandoned them. Amongst workingclass adults, substance abuse, single parenting and [depths] of despair are at their highest levels since World War II. So, if you are a working-class kid, there’s a good chance that your family is broken, your education was limited, and opportunities for life-sustaining employment are just not there anymore. What options do they have now?”

Setting the Stage: American Youth in Crisis

In The Science of Leaving Omaha, Baker and Iris allude to hopelessness and anxiety about their futures. According to separate studies from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), anxiety and depression in Americans born in the late 1990s and early 2000s (commonly referred to as “Gen Z”) are on the rise.

The HRSA study commenced in 2016, and though the global pandemic exacerbated anxiety and depression in young people, fear and hopelessness were climbing long before 2020. According to results from the HRSA study, first reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, between 2016 and 2020 there were significant increases in diagnosed anxiety and depression in children. Simultaneously, decreases in physical activity and the emotional well-being of caregivers (and an inability to cope with parenting demands) were recorded. During the pandemic, there were significant annual increases in children with diagnosed behavioral or conduct problems and simultaneous decreases in preventive medical care visits. There were also increases in unmet health care needs and growth in the number of young children whose parents quit, declined, or changed jobs because of childcare issues. According to the CDC, only 6 in 10 children (59%) received treatment for their anxiety during their study, and just over 5 in 10 children received treatment for behavioral disorders. These trends contribute to a growth in depression and anxiety, with feelings of hopelessness increasingly affecting young people’s mental health.

One of the major contributing factors to ill health in American youth is poverty. According to the Center for American Poverty, nearly 11 million of the estimated 73 million children in the United States live below the poverty threshold. Reduced access to healthy food, housing and health care have contributed to both