Director’s Note:

It might seem an odd way to begin, but there is a historical anecdote regarding the Prague Spring of 1968 in Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being which has remained with me ever since I read it nearly twelve years ago. When I step back from our play, squint these eyes, and tilt this head ever so slightly in search of some essential meaning, I am convinced this passage somehow speaks to the formation and thought of this very American drama of a married couple in crisis on the Eastern Seaboard. It is my hope that it might offer a way in for audiences as well – even if it is somewhat through a hidden side door which only admits you to one portion of the complex.

“Thinking in Zurich of those days, she no longer felt any aversion to the man. The word ‘weak’ no longer sounded like a verdict. Any man confronted with superior strength is weak, even if he has an athletic body like Dubcek’s. The very weakness that at the time had seemed unbearable and repulsive, the weakness that had driven Tereza and Tomas from the country, suddenly attracted her. She realized that she belonged among the weak, in the camp of the weak, in the country of the weak, and that she had to be faithful to them precisely because they were weak and gasped for breath in the middle of sentences.”

This portrait of a beleaguered president addressing his people under the complete control of a world superpower is nearly unfathomable to an American audience; what’s more, Tereza’s defense of weakness in response is utterly revolutionary to it – socially, politically, morally. For many years I have remained curious about this moment and wondered which camp I belonged in – the weak or the strong.

Which brings us to Hurricane Season. On its surface a simple sexual fever dream for an American couple who might populate the canonical plays of an Albee or Miller, it is made complicated by its state of disrepair and brokenness. It is a play about people reaching out, desperate for wholeness, and unsure of their feelings if they come up wanting in the end.

One might say it is a play formed out of weakness – shattered, staggering – crying out from what many believe to be the mightiest country in the history of the world.

I hope you find it useful.

-Sawyer Estes