Kitchen Theatre Company
Rachel Lampert, Artistic Director; Stephen Nunley, Managing Director
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Artistic Director Rachel Lampert talks about ARCHAEOLOGY

Rachel Lampert It’s a tremulous, shaky world the twenty-something characters in Rachel Axler’s new play ARCHAEOLOGY inhabit. They are on the brink of change, and ready-or-not, life is moving them forward. So, building a time machine as a possible aid in this journey to maturity makes a kind of strange sense in the milieu of this play.

Watching rehearsals, I have been continually struck by the truth of the characters’ circumstances this play explores. Those questions that sit in the pit of the stomach when we are young and unsure, maybe terrified of life’s next steps and their potential consequences: Am I in charge of my own destiny? Do I affect the world in any way? Am I brave enough and prepared enough to become an adult? Who am I? All these thoughts whirl around the central characters, Astin and Claire. Even Jon and John, the volunteer disaster assistants sent to help them, carry the angst of indecision and wonder about the future.
I am enjoying listening to Rachel Axler’s characters talk. They have delightfully contemporary voices that speak like the geeks, the dreamers, the fearful and the hopeful young adults of today. They are looking for sure footing, a piece of the pie, and comfort in their own skins.

Once again, the creative team led by director Margarett Perry rolled up their sleeves, opened their hearts and jumped into the new and complex territory that defines working on a never-produced-world-premiere of a new play. This work can be exhausting and exhilarating as the team breaks new ground discovering and exploring the ARCHEAOLOGY of the play. The play required some fun technical challenges unlike any we have faced before and some surprises await you. I encourage you to join all of us and open your hearts and minds to this comedy/tragedy of youthful growing pains.

This season we have looked at many stages of life—middle-aged crisis in The Two of You, life-long struggle and yearning in Happy Days, and inter-generational conflicts in Tony & the Soprano—so it is important that we include Rachel Axler’s ARCHEAOLOGY and its view of the world from the what’s-next vantage point of young adulthood.