Driving in Circles: a new musical by Jay Eddy
Directed by Sam Plattus
Driving in Circles is a solo-ish new work that traverses the highway between confessional monologue, stand-up comedy, and rock concert. 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.
Curious about what Driving in Circles sounds like? Listen to “Dog Days!”
Featuring Jay Eddy*, Zach Fontanez, and Jordan Palmer*.
Stage Manager: Fanni Horváth*, Scenic Design: Danielle DelaFuente, Lighting Design: Kevin Fulton, Costume Design: Eric Tran, Projection Design: Maria Servellon, Sound Design: Gage Baker, Voice/Text Coach: Ashleigh Reade
Content Transparency: This performance explores healing after trauma and contains themes of sexual violence, childhood sexual abuse, suicide, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Production features live electronic music (earplugs are available). For further details on topics mentioned, click here.
“Eddy has undeniable stage presence and a startlingly elastic voice, able to coo and screech, howl and sing.” —The New Haven Independent
You can also check out some of the songs that inspired Jay’s writing on Driving in Circles—complete with videos! (If you’d rather, here’s the playlist on Spotify.)
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Read more about Driving in The Boston Globe and BU Today, and sit in on a preshow chat with the creatives in the driver’s seat!
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Special events during the run of Driving in Circles:
Friday, 3/22
Affinity Night: Songwriters’ Night
Monday, 3/25
Opening Night!
Join us for a post-show reception.
Wednesday, 3/27
Post-show conversation: What Makes a Jewish Play?
In collaboration with JArts
With playwrights Lila Rose Kaplan and Jay Eddy, and Company One Theatre Artistic Director Shawn LaCount. Moderated by Laura Mandel, Executive Director of JArts.
Thursday, 3/28
Post-show conversation: Permission to Write Your Story
In collaboration with the Boston University Creative Writing Program
With writers Aline Dolinh, Theresa Okokon, and Andrew Zubiri, moderated by Creative Writing Program Administrator Annaka Saari.
Tuesday, 4/2
Post-show conversation: Writing New Musicals
In collaboration with The Dramatists Guild of America,
With playwrights-who-write-musicals Jay Eddy, Lisa Rafferty, and Alexis Scheer, moderated by BPT Artistic Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian.
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JAY EDDY is a writer, composer, and performer. Their semi-solo show Driving in Circles won the Richard Rodgers Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters), as well as the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award and Musical Theatre Award (Kennedy Center). The Gull, their musical adaptation of Chekov’s ЧАЙКА, also won the Kennedy Center’s Musical Theatre Award. They are a current Artistic Research Fellow with the Folger and a recent New Jewish Culture Fellow, New Harmony and Yaddo resident, New York Foundation for the Arts 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 Playwriting at BU, MA Music Theatre at RCSSD.
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SAM PLATTUS is a director, performer, and producer from New Haven, CT. Their work has been described as being “an intimately affecting laboratory,” “staged with unlimited inventiveness,” and “brutal and brilliant.” Sam has directed at the Portland Stage Company, The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, The Players Theater, SoHo Playhouse, Lyric Hall, and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and 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 graduate of Bowdoin College with a BA in English and Theater; and an alum of the Advanced Directing Program with the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
*Appearing through an Agreement between Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
