Walter Cronkite is Dead.
by Joe Calarco
directed by Shana Wride
September 17–October 16, 2011 in the Lyceum Space
The Story
“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.” —Walter Cronkite
Join us for the West Coast premiere of an intimate comedy that takes the vitriolic rhetoric of red state vs. blue state and asks us to view “the other” with our eyes wide open.
A fierce thunderstorm has shut down airports up and down the east coast. Two women, who appear to have nothing in common, are stuck in a waiting area at Reagan National Airport. Patty is a chatty southerner—a blue-collar woman from a red state—who is almost physically unable to tolerate silence. Margaret is a Washingtonian, reserved, educated, liberal and not interested in sharing her thoughts, or her table, with the over-packed, Walmart-clad woman who stands looking desperately at the last available seat in the entire airport—the seat occupied by Margaret’s carry-on bag.
Forced together for a long night in a public place, the two strangers have no choice but to share a bottle of wine and begin to talk…and listen. Their conversation is funny, difficult, deeply revealing and astonishingly frank in the way conversations with strangers can be. Patty and Margaret share details of their lives that lead them to a place of kinship neither of them could have imagined.
Yes, Walter Cronkite is dead, but his wisdom and compassion lives on in this insightful comedy about what might be possible if people from opposite sides of the political aisles would stop shouting and take even one night to listen.
For news release and cast photos, please visit our Media Room.