boom

by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

May 18, 19, 25, & 26, and June 1 & 2 at 8:00 PM, May 20 & 27 at 4:00 PM in the Black Box Theatre, Corvallis High School

Directed by Pat Kight

With Andrew Beck, Katie Worley and Carley Hansen Prince

“Sex to Change the Course of the World”

A grad student’s online personal ad lures a journalism student to his subterranean research lab under the pretense of an evening of no-strings-attached sex. But when a major global catastrophe strikes, their date takes on evolutionary significance and the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. Will they survive without killing each other? Who is that woman pulling the levers? And what about the fish?

An epic and intimate comedy that spans over billions of years, boom explores the influences of fate versus randomness in the course of one’s life, and life as we know it on the planet.

What the critics say:

“A…light-toned toned allegory of survival and change: a piquant theatrical effort to give evolution a taste of creationism’s narrative magic.” –Time Out NY

“… an engaging little play about the end of the world … Nachtrieb has a gift for darkly funny dialogue and an appealing way of approaching big themes sideways. [boom] winds up speaking, quietly and piquantly, to our enduring fascination with and need for myths about the beginning of life as well as its end.” –NY Times

“From pants-around-the-ankles comedy to hipster Twilight Zone takeoff…boom is imaginative and easy to like.” –The New Yorker

“Sex! Planet-ruining cataclysms! Loads of booze! We’re ready for whatever strange places boom wants to take us.” –Variety

“A grandly whacked-out apocalypse fantasy…one of those charmed evenings.” –Washington Post

“It’s literate, coarse, thoughtful, sweet, scabrously inappropriate, wracked by existential anxiety, and wonderfully humane…this is one end-of-the-world story that’s likely to leave you grinning from ear to ear.” –Washington City Paper

Tickets go on sale through the Willamette STAGE online box office approximately two weeks before opening; season subscribers get to select their seats before we open sales to the general public.

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