a little longing goes away

Late at night, a young woman gets a voicemail from her brother. Their relationship, to her, is one of those one-way things: he falls apart, there’s nobody else so she steps in, he recovers, this is how they love each other. But it wears, they both get tried. And so— ah, she thinks: maybe this is the call. The one I’ve been expecting, but hoping not to get, for years. Better make sure— so she gets on the train to his apartment, ninety minutes uptown, in a state where it seems like the inner voices of everyone she meets are audible to her, each trying to learn to love and to let go.

This is a new chamber musical, staged as a performance concert in an empty theater. Actors dance and accompany themselves, performing intimate scenes at great distances from each other while mediated by the extreme close-up of a live camera and stark beams of light.

Book by Eben Hoffer with Sowmya Asokkumar
Music by Eben Hoffer and Isaac Hoffer
Light by Jacob Wesson
Video by Cassidy Pearsall
Developed with performers: Safiya Harris, Samuel O’Byrne, Brenna Power, and Harry Thornton.

Carnegie Mellon University Playground, Winter 2019
title from song of the same name by The Books