In The Long Christmas Ride Home, Pulitzer award winning playwright, Paula Vogel, creates a beautiful story of love reaching across the veil of death in an attempt to heal the inescapable legacies of childhood.
NAU Theatre Presents: the long christmas ride home, a play of contradictions
See the Production in NAU’s Studio Theatre
March 2,3, & 4 at 7:30 p.m.
March 4 & 5 at 2:00 p.m.
the long christmas ride home is written by Pulitzer winning playwright, Paula Vogel and directed by Kathleen M. McGeever. This play of contradictions uses puppets yet is not written for children; is framed by a holiday trip home but is not meant as a Christmas story.
The family is presented in the play using both human actors and puppets inspired by traditional Japanese bunraku puppetry, or as Vogel is quoted as saying, “one Westerner's misunderstanding of bunraku.” The puppets represent the children in some scenes while the puppeteers themselves take over as the grown children in others.
The play originally premiered in 2003 and has since toured in university, community, and off-Broadway productions throughout The United States. It was Vogel’s 23rd play, and many consider it one of her best and most daring productions. The play was written as a tribute to Thornton Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Dinner,” as well his classic, “Our Town.” In one short car ride and its complications, Vogel considers the reverberations of family and childhood into adulthood, along with the possibilities of long roads taken and not taken.
Ticket prices:
General Public: $20
Senior (65+)/NAU Employee: $15
Student/Child (12 & younger): $10
Phone: (928) 523-5661
Email: theatre@nau.edu
2023/03/02 - 2023/03/06
Additional time info:
Friday, March 3, curtain 7:30pm, Panel 9:00-9:30pm Growing up Gay and Lesbian in the 1960’s, Coming of Age in the 1980’s
Saturday, March 4- Matinee,curtain 2:00pm, Panel 3:30-4:00pm Japanese Theatre, The Floating World, and Edo, Influences in the Play.
Saturday, March 4 evening performance, curtain 7:30pm, Panel 9:00-9:30pm The Nuclear Family, Gender Roles, Roles of Within the Family as Reflected in the Play
Sunday, March 5 Matinee Pre -Panel 1:15-1:45pm, curtain 2:00pm HIV/AIDS -Progress and the Future and Honoring the Ryan White Foundation
NAU Studio Theatre
NAU's Performing and Fine Arts Bldg. Riordan and Knoles, Flagstaff, AZ 86011