Utility

The tenth winner of the Yale Drama Series centers on a young mother dealing with lifes many trials Marking the tenth anniversary of the Yale Drama Series for emerging playwrights, Emily Schwends powerful work centers on Amber, a young woman struggling to raise a family in East Texas. Amber is juggling two nearly full-time jobs and three kids. Her on-again, off-again husband Chris is eternally optimistic and charming as hell, but rarely employed. The house is falling apart and Amber has an eight-year-olds birthday party to plan. Selected from more than 1,600 entries, Schwends newest playproduced by the Amoralists Theatre Company at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in 2016vividly captures the economic hardships and relationship difficulties faced by so many Americans today. Utility is a remarkable play: beautifully written and effortlessly powerful, said contest judge Nicholas Wright. At every moment the happiness of human lives is put at risk: is there any greater dramatic theme?