Driving In Circles
Driving In Circles
Driving in circles
Words and music by jay eddy
Directed by sam Plattus
Premiering at Boston Playwrights’ theatre, March 21-april 6, 2024
Driving in Circles is a new hybrid solo-ish show for solo performer and live band traversing the highway between confessional monologue, stand-up comedy, and rock concert (think: We’re Gonna Die meets Hedwig and the Angry Inch). Set to a sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming folktronica score, Driving traces the aftermath of intimate violence—mapping our hero’s darkly funny, deeply felt, defiantly hopeful journey through the bodymind-altering landscapes of trauma towards something like happiness.
Driving asks: in a world designed to make us isolated and disconnected, to make us lonely and afraid, to cut us off from collective power and communal healing, how do we make our way back to each other? How do we care for each other? What happens when we look at our pain as a bridge rather than a wall—could we make a new world together?
Approximate run time: 100 minutes
Winner of the Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater
Winner of the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Award & KCACTF Musical Theatre Award
additional support from:
New England Foundation for the Arts,
Connecticut Office of the Arts,
New Jewish Culture Fellowship,
Yaddo,
New Harmony Conference
Who We Are
Who We Are
The EPs are an artistic partnership of more than a decade primarily focused on making music theater at the intersection of fine and folk art. With a do-it-yourself ethic rooted in the intimacy of oral tradition and an absurdist spirit that embraces neuroqueer practices and aesthetics, we tell stories in active conversation with our audience and with the world around us. We try to leave the theater door open for magic as for Elijah at the seder.
Sam Plattus is a neuroqueer and non-binary artist whose work embraces liminality and muddle, celebrates queer minds and bodies, and encourages audience complicity; they believe in revealing how the magic trick is done, eliminating the barrier of spectacle, and allowing the audience to wonder at the story rather than the effect. Their work has been described as being “an intimately affecting laboratory,” “staged with unlimited inventiveness,” and “brutal and brilliant.” Sam’s work has been supported by the Connecticut Office of the Arts, The New England Foundation for the Arts, The Barn Arts Collective, and The Dragon’s Egg. They are a director, actor, and producer; a graduate of Bowdoin College with a BA in English & Theater; and an alum of the Advanced Directing Program with the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
Jay Eddy is a writer, composer, and performer. In 2022, their solo show Driving in Circles won the Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award and Musical Theatre Award, both from the Kennedy Center. They are a recent New Harmony resident, Yaddo fellow, Jonathan Larson Grant finalist, New York Foundation for the Arts fellow, and Connecticut Office of the Arts fellow. Their work for the stage has been called, “Bracingly original, astonishingly resourceful, and daringly theatrical,” and, “a joy to listen to...a beautiful tapestry of sound.” As a performer, they’ve been called, “Kate McKinnon on a cocaine bender.” MFA in Playwriting at Boston University, MA in Music Theatre from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.