Theatre Communications Group has said that Laura Eason’s Sex With Strangers “will be one of the top ten most produced plays in 2015/16 and Laura Eason will be one of the most produced playwrights. Sex With Strangers is taking the theatre world by storm, and has earned Eason a place among the top 20 playwrights produced this season.
(I should mention that she shares this place with only two other women, Sarah Ruhl and Dominique Morriseau. Lucky for the Curious audience, more than 50% of this season was written by a woman, earning us recognition from the Gender Parity group, The Kilroys.)
Clearly, there is something compelling about Laura Eason’s writing, because she has also swept the nation with her other work. Are you familiar with the wildly popular series House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright? If not, it’s an immensely popular Netflix original series that catapulted the online series into the mainstream by completely changing the way we view the quality of online production companies. It’s serendipitous that in discussing the work of Laura Eason we should be discussing House of Cards, because just as the technology available to Sex With Strangers character Ethan changes the way he interacts with women and lovers (more on that anon) House of Cards fundamentally changed the way that writers interact with the internet. Prominent writers, who may have previously looked down at a web series over a big network series, have found success writing for an online medium. Our playwright Laura Eason served as a staff writer for House of Cards Season Two, a story editor for Season Three, and an executive story editor for the highly anticipated Season Four. She has helped shape and mold some the country’s most talked-about characters (for better or for worse), and has written some of House of Cards’ most suspenseful, thrilling, and memorable episodes.
For those of you who have not watched the series, I’ll spare the spoilers, but suffice to say that Eason’s sense of character, dialogue, and tension demonstrate her depth of understanding of the vices that plague our society today. Her voice is one that perfectly captures people who try to measure ethics with ambitions, morals with precedent, and relationships with ego. Her characters demonstrate how independence and vulnerability can bring out both the best and worst in people, and she doesn’t leave audiences with a tidy ending.
Sex With Strangers is a surprising show. It’s not a cliche, it’s not a caricature of a genre; rather, it is a telling portrait of what it means when technology moves so fast that generation gaps are a mere decade apart. It asks whether or not it is possible to reinvent oneself in an age where everyone’s actions, accomplishments, and mistakes are publicly available at the touch of a button. It explores the question of whether sexual encounters require emotional intimacy, and whether emotional intimacy requires full knowledge of a person’s past. When you are having sex, how can you be so sure that you are not doing so with a stranger, or that you are not a stranger yourself?
Ready to start your new year off with one of the most popular female voices in the entertainment industry today? Join us at Curious.
-Jacqueline Lawler, Contributor