THE RICHARD DRESSER TRILOGY

Richard Dresser’s agent, Joyce Ketay at The Gersh Agency and my agent Bruce Ostler at the Bret Adams Agency are “pitching” THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS TRILOGY to regional theaters for a future production. Our dream is to find a theater that will produce the entire Trilogy as a major theatrical event.

CATF produced all three plays over three consecutive seasons: In 2006 we produced AUGUSTA; and in 2007 we produced THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS; and last season we produced the third play A VIEW OF THE HARBOR. Now our dream is to find a home where we can do all three plays together with a cast of six actors and a single spare, fluid set which is constantly transforming itself into the shifting worlds of the colliding social classes.

Our “pitch”:
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is a trilogy of plays about American life during this dizzying period of transition. With a battered economy, seemingly endless wars, relentless job losses, dwindling resources, and seriously diminished hopes for the future, where does happiness lie? Is there more to this struggle than survival? While each of these comedies stands alone, together they present a hilarious and deeply unsettling snapshot of an entire culture in a mid-life crisis.

Each of the three plays is set in a different social class, and they are thematically linked by the desperate need of the characters to escape their class. In each play there’s a haunting sense that happiness is there, waiting to be savored, but just out of reach.

The trilogy explores our twin obsessions with money and happiness in a chaotic time when both are in perilously short supply.

So we are in the process of shopping around for a theater…I will keep you informed…

—Ed Herendeen