Laughing Through the Apocalypse: Fall Play Serves Up Dystopia with a Side of Wry
Photo by A. Pierce Bounds '71.
Future Anxiety opens Friday, Feb. 28
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
Widespread fires and storms. Threatened natural resources. Supply-chain worries. Fraught international relations. Sound familiar?
No, this isn’t a review of current headlines. It’s some of the challenges faced by the characters in Dickinson’s fall 2025 play, Future Anxiety. In it, a young generation seeks new ways to deal with life on a planet with increasingly drained resources and suspect inhabitants. Fortunately, Karl has built a spaceship. Everyone wants to get on board—except, perhaps, Karl’s girlfriend, Christine.
Future Anxiety is an intelligent imagining of a future when things we now take for granted are in short supply and radioactivity is everywhere. According to The New York Times, there’s a “spoonful of sugar” in this dystopian tale. It’s a gallows humor that provides “the right mix of wit and intensity.”
Premiered Off-Off Broadway in 2011, Future Anxiety was a finalist for the National New Play Network's Smith Prize. It was written by Laurel Haines, whose play The Dianalogues was named by Smith and Kraus a “Best Play of 2023” by a woman playwright.
Showtimes are Friday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, March 1, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.; and Sunday, March 2, at 2 p.m. Tickets are donation-based, starting at $5.
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Published February 27, 2025