How do you kick off a season reflective of a nation’s disconnected discontent? Dreamcatcher Repertory Theatre is leading off with a play for our times, Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s “Every Brilliant Thing.” Duncan Macmillan wrote the play to show people their struggle is real, and that it is not theirs alone.  And that by itself may be enough to save lives.
Clark Carmichael—company member at Dreamcatcher, as well as a habitué of Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and someone you have seen perhaps on Broadway, perhaps on the small screen in your living room—gets a chance to show us the stuff of which he is made.  He struts and frets his hour upon the stage and takes us with him.  He is the second grader, whose father explains that his mother has done something very, very serious and that she is terribly unhappy.  He seamlessly transitions to the college student rolling in the limerance of first love, and later, the man whose struggles help us to understand our own, and to laugh at our foibles, even as we empathize with his.  This is a first-class piece of storytelling and the intimate audience capped at 50, so you’d best make your reservations now.
Directed by Dreamcatcher Rep’s artistic director and founding member Laura Ekstrand, the play is just the beginning of a season full of thought-provoking theatre, telling the stories of our lives.  You are part of “Every Brilliant Thing,” as much as we are all part of one another’s lives.  No one is an island, we swim in the teeming masses of group experience, and when you give yourself this gift of Carmichael’s performance, you will be changed—forever.
Wait no longer, move that mouse!  Dreamcatcher’s “Every Brilliant Thing” winds up on October 8, so visit www.Dreamcatcherrep.org now to get tickets and more details on what promises to be a superb season of new work.