Notre Dame Film, Television, and Theatre presents
A senior theatre production by
Lucy Barron, Tommy O'Brien, and Gabe Ozaki
THIS IS OUR YOUTH
by Kenneth Lonergan
April 28-30, 2023
Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm
Sunday at 2:30 pm
In 1982, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, wealthy, articulate, pot-smoking teenagers emerged into adulthood in a country that had resoundingly rejected everything they were raised to believe in. The very last wave of New York City's 60s-style Liberalism had come of age — and there was nowhere left to go.
In hilariously and agonizing details, This is Our Youth follows 48 hours of three very lost young souls in the Big Apple at the dawn of the Reagan Era. There's Warren Straub, a dejected 19-year-old who steals $15k from his abusive lingerie-tycoon father. There's Dennis Ziegler, the charismatic domineering drug-dealing friend who helps Warren put the money to good use. And there's Jessica Goldman, the anxiously insightful young woman Warren yearns for.
This is Our Youth is a funny, painful, and compassionate living snapshot of the moment between adolescence and adulthood when many people first go out into the world on their own, armed only with the ideas and techniques they developed as teenagers, which are far more sophisticated than their parents ever realize and far less effectual than they themselves can possibly imagine.