Corsicana / Evanston Salt Costs Climbing - by Will Arbery (Paperback)

About the Book

"A double-volume of plays by acclaimed playwright Will Arbery that explore communities of outsiders who strive to help one another persevere in the face of despair. In the small town of Corsicana, Texas, two half-siblings-a woman with Down Syndrome named Ginny and Christopher, an aspiring filmmaker-are adrift following their mother's recent death. When close family friend Justice introduces the siblings to a reclusive local artist named Lot, the four slowly form an unlikely yet powerful bond that reshapes them all in necessary and surprising ways. This delicate quartet examines the long-lasting scars of grief, as well as the universal human need to care and be cared for. In Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, Basil and Peter spend long nights during the winters in Evanston, IL driving a salting truck, passing the time by talking about the increasingly harsh weather outside and their own internal turmoil. Their supervisor Jane Maiworm tries to boost morale by reminding them of the quiet heroism of public service, but Jane herself is privately struggling with the possibility of adopting a new technology that would undoubtedly be better for the environment-but would also put Basil and Peter out of a job. A surreal and sensitive play that gazes unflinchingly into the chasm of despair, suggesting that crisis, both climatic and personal, can only be reckoned with when faced head-on"--

Book Synopsis

Two plays that explore communities of outsiders who strive to help one another persevere in the face of despair.

In this two-play volume, acclaimed playwright Will Arbery explores the dynamics within tight-knit communities of outsiders working together to persevere against despair, whether intimate or cosmic. From wildly different angles, Corsicana and Evanston Salt Costs Climbing both examine the shape-shifting specters of grief, the pull of desire and dreams, and the universal human need for receiving and giving care.

Review Quotes

Praise for Corsicana

"Watching Corsicana,
I felt it was about who gets to make art, and for whom. Reading it, I felt it was about how becoming 'grown' is, for anyone, a lifelong process of failing upward. Thinking back on it, I feel it was about the way the world tucks beauty inside envelopes of sorrow, and vice versa...Without ignoring the bone-deep sadness of characters confused and stymied by loss, it lets us watch them climb their way out of it--heading toward joy and sharing some in the process."

--Jesse Green, New York Times

"The four characters of Arbery's Corsicana are all figuring things out: how to mature, how to move on, how to love, how to express. And they're all taking care of each other in little ways...Will Arbery is quickly establishing himself as the poet of Texas loneliness. He is one of the most exciting playwrights working in the American theater, stretching the form to new shapes and expanding his voice with each successive play."

--Lane Williamson, Exeunt

Praise for Evanston Salt Costs
Climbing

"In a great piece of art, you'll have one moment where the truth will punch through. But in
a profoundly generous piece of art, like Evanston--a play that is theoretical, painful, deep, and hysterically funny--those moments of truth keep punching through and through and through."

--Chloe
Cooper Jones, Bomb Magazine

"Arbery is the playwright of the moment. His project as a playwright is to yank away that 'dishonest mask of pretended order, ' using the means he has at hand--the empathetic tools of performance and the electrifying effects of wild unreality."

--Helen Shaw, New
Yorker

About the Author

Will Arbery is a playwright and screenwriter. His other plays include Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Plano, You Hateful Things, and Wheelchair. His awards include a Whiting, Obie, Lucille Lortel, and New York Drama Critics' Circle. He's currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club, Adventureland, and The Metropolitan Opera. He was a writer and producer on Succession (HBO).