PLAYS ABOUT ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS: CARE AND CONTEMPLATION
Photography by Grace K. McConnell
Eric Coble’s First Snow of Summer concludes the mainstage lineup of SOTP’s 2024–2025 season, aptly titled *Omega & Alpha*. In most theatrical narratives, the curtain rises on a beginning and descends with a resolution. This season, however, has dared to ask a different set of questions: What happens after the ending? What do we discover when we linger in the aftermath, when the dust of climax has settled and the real work of living begins? In each of the three mainstage productions, audiences have encountered characters whose lives have reached a breaking point—be it relational, ideological, or existential—and followed them not toward conclusion, but toward emergence.
Rather than fixating on the eventfulness of plot, this season has embraced stories that unfold like a “slow burn”—accumulative experiences that seem, at first, minor or even mundane, but eventually yield transformation. These works inhabit a kind of liminal or purgatorial space, suspended between what was and what might be. In the absence of high-octane action or conventional catharsis, they have instead illuminated the fragile, quiet metamorphoses of people recalibrating their identities, their relationships, their sense of self and place.
In Heidi Schreck’s Grand Concourse, we witnessed the unraveling of a woman’s faith-bound allegiance to a religious institution. Over the course of the play, her crisis of belief gave way not to despair but to hard-won autonomy. Meanwhile, a floundering college dropout—initially defined by manipulative behavior and a need for attention—found unexpected clarity and responsibility, reshaping herself into a grounded adult with a renewed moral compass. Alongside these arcs came the births and deaths of various relationships—romantic, platonic, professional—and with them, new purpose, new direction, new possibility.
Chisa Hutchinson’s Amerikin, set in the hauntingly resonant graveyards of Sharpsburg, Maryland, delivered a searing critique of American ideologies. We saw a negligent husband and wannabe white supremacist walloweing in the total destruction of the societal backbone he had tried to align himself; but from his annihilation of circumstance rose someone who was willing to rabidly fight for his family (or what was left of it). A journalist who thought his career had all but vanished, discovered a renewed sense of pride in his family; and a first-time journalist who had favored safety above all things discovered there are causes that there is power in staring danger straight in the eye.
Now, with First Snow of Summer, we come full circle—or perhaps more accurately, we arrive at a new threshold. Coble’s play opens as a wildfire rages on the forested Colorado horizon, threatening the childhood home of a family drawn back together briefly gathering before a carpool to the wedding of their eldest brother. To say much more would rob audiences of the delicate revelations the play offers. But suffice it to say: its sold-out opening is testament to the resonance of its themes and lauded expectations for such a talented and caring production team. For those still hoping to catch it, get those tickets quick—performances continue for three weekends only.
What has proven most instructive about this season is its insistence on slowing down and asking us to navigate the aftermath where there isn’t a clear narrative arc ahead of us—those messy, nonlinear spaces of uncertainty. These spaces often go unexamined in our cultural narratives. We prefer clarity, structure, and resolution. Yet life seldom offers such neat arcs. Whether it’s the loss of a job, the dissolution of a relationship, the end of formal education, the death of a loved one, or simply the destabilizing effects of shifting political and social landscapes, many of us find ourselves in the wilderness between identities. These transitional periods can feel directionless, humiliating, clumsy, and even ugly. And yet, they are the crucibles in which we discover who we truly are.
These are the moments in which character is forged—not in times of triumph, but in the absence of external validation, when the structures that once supported us vanish and we are left to navigate the wreckage. First Snow of Summer captures one such moment with grace, fairness, and unflinching honesty. It is a play that dares to be both beautiful and hurtful, poetic and grounded, miraculous and devastating.
The collaborative stewardship of this story—by actors, designers, stage managers, the director, and playwright—has resulted in a contemplative, resonant piece of theatre. It is not just a season closer, but a mirror held up to our own in-between moments. In embracing the ambiguity of the “after,” Omega & Alpha has offered us more than theatre; it has given us tools for reflection and, perhaps, transformation.
As the curtain falls on this extraordinary season, we are left not with finality, but with possibility. And sometimes, that is the most powerful ending of all.
