The Happy Garden of Life

by Anna Jastrzembski

Jenna Hoffmann certainly delivers in her direction of Anna Jastrzembski’s stage adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s “2BR02B,” The Happy Garden of Life... Happy Garden poetically riffs on this petty aesthetic hypocrisy as politically analogous to the illusion of choice and makes it integral to its world-building.
— EYE ON THE ARTS, NY -- Jonathan Matthews
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Creative Team

Direction by Jenna Hoffmann | Written by Anna Jastrzembski

Original Composition & Music Direction by Emily Erickson | Produced by Halla Tryggvadottir

Scenic Design by Matthew Imhoff Designs | Lighting Design by Christina Tang | Sound Design by Jacob Robinson | Stage Managed by Cara Cincione | Asst. Stage Managed by Cara Kienitz | Asst. Direction by Yannik Encarnação

Cast

Brie Archer | Brian Sanchez | Heather Holmes | Joe Rivera | Lizzy Jarrett | Uma Paranjpe | Nicolette Ellis

Erin Noll | Thomas Morris | Elizabeth Chappel

Hoffmann fashions a modular performance arena wherein actors can be both grotesque caricatures and deeply human, clearly shifting between the stylized mannerisms of who they have to be for the Party and who they really are.

This is precisely why we are here – to have this bird’s eye view overwhelmingly up close. The WPP is not the Trump Administration, as it is more a kind of socialism gone awry. What we can identify with, though, is the bewilderment of wondering how a population could ever achieve such a protestable reality.
— EYE ON THE ARTS, NY -- Jonathan Matthews