Night Sky ✦ June 4 – 20, 2027

by Susan Yankowitz

Directed by Ruthann Saunders

BOX OFFICE HOURS
6:00pm – 8:00pm | June 4 & 5, June 11 & 12, June 18 & 19
1:00pm – 3:00pm | June 6, June 13, June 20

The lobby opens 1 hour prior to curtain. The house opens approximately ½ hour prior to curtain. Performances will take place in the The Robert Montgomery Auditorium.

Night Sky
by Susan Yankowitz

Two infinite mysteries: the endless cosmos above, and the fragile human brain within.

You are invited to an extraordinary, poetic, and profoundly moving evening of theater with Susan Yankowitz’s acclaimed masterpiece, Night Sky. Inspired by the real-life resilience of legendary director Joseph Chaikin, this beautifully unique drama weaves together the grand scale of astronomy with the deeply intimate terrain of human love and language.

Anna is a brilliant, fiercely ambitious astronomy professor at the peak of her career. Her life is filled with the fast-paced language of science, an opera-singing fiancé, and a spirited teenage daughter. But in a single, shattering moment, a sudden car accident turns her world completely upside down. Anna survives, but she is left with aphasia—a condition that leaves her sharp intellect entirely intact but traps her words behind a wall of cognitive static.

What emerges from Anna’s mouth is a completely rewritten vocabulary: a hodgepodge of jumbled, broken words that are alternately confusing, heartbreakingly funny, fiercely original, and deeply wise. In a series of brief, lyrical, and incredibly human episodes, Night Sky follows Anna’s courageous fight to piece her life back together, rebuild her family bonds, and achieve a breathtaking personal triumph on the global stage.

It is a play that strips away the clichés of illness to find a gorgeous, universal truth about our desperate, beautiful need to communicate with one another.

Run Time: Approximately 1½ hours.

Content Advisory: Best enjoyed by adults and teens ages 14 and older due to mature themes, complex psychological dynamics, and emotionally raw family arguments. The play explores heavy themes of sudden medical trauma, cognitive frustration, and disability.

Sensory Notes: May include sudden loud noises, bright flashing lights, and abstract soundscapes representing internal mental confusion.