THE STORY: Snowed in overnight at a middle-America airport, college lovers Elena Carson and Reed McAllister have an unexpected and life-altering reunion. Elena has stayed true to her hippie-ish, counter-culture path, while Reed has gone predictably corporate and conservative. As the night gives way to laughter, banter, remembrance and alcohol, Elena and Reed revisit a past that holds more surprises than they imagined—and a present that neither of them could have predicted. Filled with laughter and ache, SHOOTING STAR is a bittersweet romantic comedy about the middle days of our lives, and how we got there.
“We humans love stories. And every once in a while, if you’re lucky, you see a story that stands out from all the others. Steven Dietz’s SHOOTING STAR is one of those stories. There are plenty of laughs in Dietz’s humorous tale, but at every important moment, every emotional high, every startling revelation, the theatre grows utterly silent. Stories told this well don’t come around very often.”
—Austin Chronicle.
“Hilarious and very serious…Steven Dietz’s work is filled with undercurrents. You will find yourself laughing out loud. And then, two minutes later, realizing there’s something serious under the guffaws. SHOOTING STAR is a work both funny and sad; a quick and sharp play about our lives, one that gives us all the fun and all the tears of our times. This is the play Neil Simon, at his best, would have written if he had been young in the 1970s.” —WRNI, NPR Providence (RI).
“Steven Dietz sends a tender valentine to middle-age in SHOOTING STAR, a smart and sweet comedy from one of the American theater’s most-produced playwrights. Dietz’s gift as a writer is an acute attention to our modern language. He elevates ordinary conversation to a kind of music. Dietz makes reality poetic.” —Austin-American Statesman.
“SHOOTING STAR is that rare romantic comedy that is funny, but also charming, endearing, and not removed from reality…the entertainment is in the telling, in the playful banter, and there’s lots of it. SHOOTING STAR starts bright and doesn’t fade. It is bittersweet, and ultimately redemptive.” —Providence (RI) Journal.
