Ester is a swimmer trying to stay afloat.
Amy is curled up on the locker room floor.
Starting on Saturday, April 9, the Echo Theatre Company, based in the Atwater Village Theatre, presents the West Coast premiere of Dry Land, a play by newcomer Ruby Rae Spiegel that has critics and audiences across the U.S. abuzz.
Alana Dietze directs Connor Kelly-Eiding, Teagan Rose, Daniel Hagen, Ben Horwitz and Jenny Soo.
Set in the locker room of a central Florida high school, Dry Land is a haunting new play about female friendship and abortion. Written when Ms. Spiegel was just 21 years old and still an undergrad at Yale, it is a deeply truthful portrait of the fears, hopes and bonds of teenage girls — as gut-wrenching as it is funny. In his New York Times “critic’s pick” review, Ben Brantley calls Dry Land “tender, caustic, funny and harrowing, often all at the same time.”
According to the playwright, the title of the play is “about safety, trying to find that safe place to swim ashore.” The initial inspiration for the play came from a 2012 article in New Republic called The Rise of DIY Abortions.
“I was really shocked,” Spiegel said in an interview. “This article looked at how American abortion rights are being rolled back: clinics are disappearing and young women across America have to resort to these self-abortion means.”
But it was a brief pregnancy scare that led to the more emotional core of the play – “that feeling of intense aloneness in your own body—that you are the only one that can do anything about this – and it is just in you. That stuck with me.”
Dry Land runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8, and Sundays at 4 and 7, April 9 through May 15.
There will be three preview performances, on Wednesday, April 6, Thursday, April 7 and Friday, April 8, at 8. Tickets are $25, except previews which are pay-what-you-can. Atwater Village Theatre is at 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles 90039. On-site parking is free. For reservations and information, call 310.307.3753 or go to www.EchoTheaterCompany.com.
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