TDF Stages

The award-winning dramatist opens a pair of dramas back-to-back Off Broadway

---

While teaching playwriting at Harvard University back in 2011, Ken Urban was struck by the optimism of his students. "That was a time when young people felt hopeful about the future of the United States," he recalls ruefully.

Intrigued, he wrote a play about it: A Guide for the Homesick, now receiving its New York premiere at DR2 Theatre Off Broadway. But oh, so much has changed over the past 13 years, the play has taken on a resonance he didn't anticipate.

In A Guide for the Homesick, Urban investigates Obama-era idealism through Jeremy and Teddy, two American strangers whose night together serves as the heart of this tender and gripping two-hander.

Jeremy (Uly Schlesinger) is an aid worker in his twenties returning home from Uganda. On a layover in Amsterdam, he meets slightly older financial analyst Teddy (McKinley Belcher III) in a hotel bar, and follows him up to a shabby room. 

"I think hotel rooms are always haunted a little bit," says Urban, whose previous plays include Nibbler, The Correspondent and The Awake. "Not by ghosts, but the remnants of the people who were there before you."

Jeremy and Teddy are certainly haunted, yet neither is eager to open up. Jeremy's placement in Uganda was cut short, but he won't say why. Teddy came to Amsterdam with a work friend, Ed, but his explanation for his pal's early departure keeps changing.

In flashbacks interspersed throughout their conversation, the two performers shift expertly between timeframes and characters while Urban gradually fills in the gaps. Belcher III transforms into Nicholas, a gay Ugandan local who befriended Jeremy. And Schlesinger becomes Ed as we learn what really happened between him and Teddy.

Of the pair, Jeremy is the more naively optimistic, inspired by that period of "hope and change" in the US. He assures Nicholas that a proposal in the Ugandan parliament to make homosexuality illegal will fail, and the country will gradually find its way toward greater acceptance.

"This is just how change works," Jeremy insists. "Look at my country: Three years ago, we elected our first Black president!"

Teddy, a gay Black man navigating the straight white world of finance, has a less rosy view of the future. But he's moved by Jeremy's desire to do good, especially since Teddy has made ethical compromises in his life.

Both men are also struggling to untangle their sexual identities. Teddy is openly gay but projects a macho image because of his career. Jeremy insists he's not gay but sends Teddy a number of signals suggesting otherwise.

Urban notes that homophobia is still prevalent in the finance world, where Teddy must fit in, as well as at the character's alma mater, Harvard.

"There was kind of a looking down on people who were still figuring it out," Urban recalls about the university's LGBTQ+ population. "Teaching at what everybody thought was the most liberal school in the world, I was surprised by how homophobia kept popping up in interesting ways, and that filtered into the play."

After earning positive reviews, A Guide for the Homesick recently extended until February 2. Then in March, Urban's new play Danger and Opportunity will open at the nascent, living-room sized venue East Village Basement. Like A Guide for the Homesick, it's an intimate drama exploring sexuality and social constructs as a male gay couple invites an ex-girlfriend into their relationship.

"It's me exploring what it means to love more than one person," says Urban, and whether "people really change, or do we just wish they changed?"

Danger and Opportunity is set squarely in the US of today—unlike A Guide for the Homesick, which Urban views as "a history play" because it reflects such a specific, now far-away moment in American culture. 

"It hits differently now," he concedes. "I don't feel like my students have that much optimism right now." But it's not a downer. While Urban insists he "doesn't have any wisdom to impart," he still hopes we can all learn something from Jeremy and Teddy.

"The fact that they're there for each other at the end of the play, and they're showing each other care, feels so powerful now," Urban says. "Because that is what we need to do. We need to take care of each other, because it is going to be a hard few years."

---

TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for A Guide for the Homesick. Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.

A Guide for the Homesick is also occasionally available at our TKTS Discount Booths.