The Unexpected 3rd

Buy at least two months in advance, get 20% off!
Buy all four shows in the mainstage season (not including GSP Selects), get 50% off!

The following are reviews from the run of The Unexpected 3rd at People's Light in 2025:

"A gift of a play" -The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Grody captivates the audience... [She] uses physical comedy, dancing, and singing, along with whimsical pushups throughout the play that ignores any usual structure" -Vista.today

"An unsentimental, smart stream of consciousness... that's never smarmy" -Broad Street Review

"Deeply personal and humorous" -Broadwayworld

90 minutes with no intermission

Continue the conversation with Kathryn after the show on the following dates: 

• October 13
• October 14
• October 15
• October 21
• October 23
• October 25
• October 28
• October 30 

Stay in your seats once the curtain falls and satisfy your curiosity by asking questions and engaging in deeper discourse about The Unexpected 3rd. Post show talkbacks will begin approximately 5 minutes after the show ends and will last approximately 15-20 minutes.

CHOOSE YOUR PRICE 10/13 AT 7:30PM

OPENING NIGHT 10/16 AT 7:30PM

CHOOSE YOUR PRICE 10/21 AT 7:30PM

OPEN CAPTION ENGLISH 10/24 AT 2PM

AUDIO DESCRIPTION 10/24 AT 2PM

SUNDAY SYMPOSIUM 10/25 AT 2PM

My writing life comes from a very specific place…

When I became a mother of a 2nd son, someone asked me whether I was working or just staying home having fun... Seriously?? I was so stunned by the ignorance of the question that I decided to answer it theatrically, and share with the audience the labor of parenting from the time the kids woke until they were sung to sleep, hoping to make mothers’ and some dads’ labor and love visible...

Falling Apart… Together was a response to the practice of so many families falling apart at the first sign of serious conflict, and I wanted to show the possible mending, not just the catastrophic.

And The Unexpected 3rd is my response to my culture’s adoration of anyone under 30, and the feeling of being disregarded as a person of value, particularly a woman of value if your hair is white... So, this is my offering of how we can still show up, have new adventures, ideas, and march to your own particular drum whether you are 40 or 60 or 80! I ask us to insist on being seen, and embrace possibilities that might surprise you, even as you deal with challenges galore, and lord there are challenges...

So, these 3 pieces are inspired by what I experience and what I feel many fellow beings experience that might not show up in the culture at large. So, tonight you will see the last of the trilogy, where I am showing up, shouting out, “I’m still here,” marching or strutting or strolling, but ever...

Onward…

It has been a five year gift to me...

...starting with COVID when my longtime friend and collaborator, Kathryn Grody, and I started reaching out from our COVID isolation, she on the East Coast and me on the West. She told me she was hatching a new play about this inevitable third of our life, its challenges and its comedy. I told her to send me what she had. A huge stack of stories and essays arrived in the mail, and she also dared to venture out west in person in late 2021, bringing a small suitcase filled with typed pages covered with her illegible, scribbled notes that reminded me of a Cy Twombly painting. We sat outside and began our journey of taking her wisdom and gift for storytelling and turning it all into a play. I had directed her two other wonderful plays but this one spoke to me like no other. This one revealed her big heart, humor and enormous courage. This one shows us a path of light towards living fully on this earth as we all move towards the inevitable. The passage of time.

I loved creating a visual world for this play. Designer Nina Ball and I focused on Kathryn’s playful imagination blended with existential images like the tree that Beckett insists on having in Godot, Dali’s melting clock face, and the mad scribbles and notes and sketches that artists often do as they search for their truth.

We love being in the Arthur Laurents Theater and here in New Brunswick. It is a warm and welcoming space that embraces the stage as we also hope to embrace you with this joyful play.

Download the Program