BIRTHDAY CANDLES, Detroit Public Theatre 2018 © Chuk Nowak
Director: Vivienne Benesch, Scenic Design: Michael Carnahan, Lighting Design Cecelia Durbin, Costume Design: Shelby Newport, Sound Design: Katie Hopgood
The circle of life
BIRTHDAY CANDLES
By Noah Haidle (US)
3 F / 3 M
Drama
English original text
BIRTHDAY CANDLES takes the audience on a journey through the life of Ernestine Ashworth by dropping in on her birthdays. Starting at her 17th birthday and winding up when she’s over 100, we witness her ups and downs and how life tends to repeat itself from one generation to the next. As a young teenager, Ernestine has an ambition to become a “rebel against the universe” by “surprising God”, but like a lot of dreamers, she eventually falls into a more conventional life and wonders whether she should have held out for more.
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Noah Haidle © Kelsey Shultis
NOAH HAIDLE (b. 1978) graduated from Princeton University and The Juilliard School, where he was a Lila Acheson Wallace writer-in-residence. He is the recipient of three Lincoln Center Lecompte Nouy Awards, a Helen Merrill Award for new playwrights, a Claire Tow Award and a NEA / TCG Theater Residency Grant. His screenplay STAND UP GUYS premiered in 2013 with Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin in the lead roles, and in 2018, he was episode writer on the TV series KIDDING, starring Jim Carey. His award-winning plays focus on love, life, death, aging, loneliness, loss, and the backside to the American dream and its’ ideals.
