The Flu Season by Will Eno
MainStage Full Production, directed by Michael Beatty
Auditions are at 7pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 17 and 18, 2025 at Acting Ensemble
Production dates are April 25 and 26, May 1, 2, and 3 at 7:30pm, and April 27 and May 4 at 2:00 pm.
A Tragicomedy
THE STORY: Set in a hospital and in a theatre, THE FLU SEASON is a love story—a reluctant one, a love story in spite of itself.
Winner of the 2004 Oppenheimer Award.
The Flu Season is an unconventional tale that follows the relationship of a couple known simply as Man and Woman. They are patients in a mental hospital, attended by well-meaning Doctor and Nurse who are just as detached from reality as the patients. Literary devices-turned-characters, Prologue and Epilogue, guide the audience through the story, framing each scene and offering sharp commentary along the way.
THE CHARACTERS:
Prologue, a narrator. Male. He should differ – if not physically, at least in terms of demeanor – from Epilogue. In physical terms, perhaps Prologue is large, and Epilogue is skinny. More importantly, where Prologue should tend toward warmth and geniality in his demeanor, Epilogue should seem colder, more angular, should maybe even have a flair for a seductive kind of cruelty. That said, they are both narrators, after all, and are therefore generally restrained in their manner; so that whatever feelings they have about the play and its story (and they should have many strong feelings) should be seen more in their suppression than in their expression. We should see them managing (with a couple of exceptions, mainly in Prologue’s case) to overcome the force of their feelings, or, to deny those feelings, or avoid them altogether. Though none of this should be played too obviously. The general effect, and this is true of most of the characters in “The Flue Season”, should be similar to watching a pane of glass slowly break (to use a metaphor). These are very particular notes describing a very particular effect; don’t let them be confusing. There is nothing here that is not in Hamlet’s speech to the players (Act II, sc. 2). Play it simply and straightforwardly, with all the dignity, comedy , and tragedy that naturally occurs I the human animal. Prologue and Epilogue believe what they are saying, they care about the audience (though in very different ways). They play has a close relation to each of their identities and histories, so the stakes are always high for each of them. Both narrators remain onstage, except where noted. Finally, though Prologue is ot aware of Epilogue, the latter is aware of the former.
Epilogue, a narrator. Male. As described above.
Man, late twenties.
Woman, late twenties.
Doctor, male, fifties, doctoral, dignified though somewhat distracted.
Nurse, female, early fifties, maternal, also dignified though somewhat distraced.
“In Will Eno’s latest play, a love story goes bad (really bad), a play gets written in painful fits and starts, snow falls, it turns to slush. Maybe spring arrives. This is a play to remind us why sunsets make us sad, how nostalgia is like fog and why we live our lives as though we are in mourning for them. THE FLU SEASON is stingingly funny and really rather beautiful. Will Eno is an original, a maverick wordsmith whose weird, wry dramas gurgle with the grim humor and pain of life. Eno specializes in the connections of the unconnected, the apologetic murmurings of the disengaged, those who have suppressed their humanity to survive. It is vicious stuff, written in a language so deceptively innocent, so full of platitudes, that you don’t realize it has cut you deep until you feel the warm seep of bloody despair.” —Guardian (UK).
“Eno’s playwriting is of a potent strain—tough to anticipate, difficult to resist.” —Village Voice.
Will Eno is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Helen Merrill Playwriting Fellow, and a Fellow of the Edward F. Albee Foundation. The Flu Season premiered at The Gate Theatre in London and then opened in New York where it won the Oppenheimer Award (2004) for best debut by an American playwright. His play Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. His collection of short plays Oh, The Humanity and other good intentions was produced at the Flea Theater in New York in November 2007. An excerpt of his play Tragedy: a tragedy appeared in the June 2006 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Tragedy: a tragedy had its U.S. premiere at Berkeley Rep Theatre in March of 2008. His plays are published by Oberon Books, in London, and by TCG and Playscripts, in the United States.
