Thu 3/21-Sat 3/23 @ 7PM

For the third week of its Test Flight program of plays in development, Cleveland Public Theatre offers an intense work called How To Live in a House on Fire, written, directed and produced by Kari Barclay, an assistant professor of theater at Oberlin College who directed CPT’s production of Alter last year.

“It’s 2020 in Berkeley, California, and wildfires are raging,” we’re told. “As a gay couple prepares to evacuate, they decide what from the 50 years of their relationship to take with them and what to leave behind. Their preparations take them back to the night they met in a queer commune in Berkeley in radical 1970, when other fires raged through the community and they dared to dream of a better future.”

Playwright Tennessee Williams, they remind us, said, “We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.” This play layers on the meanings and complexities of queer love. It also contains, they warn us, “sexually explicit language, workplace homophobia, alcohol and marijuana use, discussions of police violence, and depictions of wildfire destruction.”  So it’s definitely not child-friendly.

All CPT productions are “Pay What You Wish.” Go here to get tickets.