Over the past several decades, the fundamental definition of “family” has changed — and the collaborators of Collaboration Town have come of age through some 30-odd of those years.

In their new show Family Play (1979 to present), previously titled Help Me to Make It and part of their two-year participation in The Archive Alliance Residency, CTown co-artistic directors, actors, and playwrights on the project Boo Killebrew and Geoffrey Decas O’Donnell (fellow playwright Jordan Seavey spoke about the project on an earlier episode of the podcast, during the show’s workshop last summer) explore the changing nature of the family through a series of 116 moments — many of which will be familiar to…well, anyone who’s grown up.

Listen in as Boo and Geoffrey discuss what makes a family, “a lot of Google Docs,” the deconstruction of the traditional nuclear family in traditional American drama, and how you define a person based on moments.

“…if we’re going to explore how family is changing, then we need to explore traditional structure in plays…we wanted to just break everything down as much as possible…take away definitions of people…everyone is everyone is everyone…”

New Ohio Theater and Collaboration Town present

Family Play (1979 to present)

written by Geoffrey Decas O’Donnell, Boo Killebrew, and Jordan Seavey
directed by Lee Sunday Evans

New Ohio Theater
154 Christopher Street
Manhattan

thru May 16, 2014
Mondays & Tuesdays @ 7:00pm
Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays @ 8pm

tickets: $18, available via CTown’s website

photos by Hunter Canning