On its face, BOOTH seems like a play in which few things happen. The setting, which remains static throughout, is an ordinary control booth in a high school auditorium. It’s a little dirty and it smells weird. The boards, to an outsider, look like the dashboard of some strange spaceship: they’re covered in rows of buttons and faders, each obviously useful, but apparently meaningless.  

The drama, too, seems ordinary. Three high school kids cram themselves into the booth, and we watch as they suffer and delight in the usual dramas of adolescence: parents, girlfriends, grades, after-school jobs.  

Upon closer investigation, however, BOOTH becomes an infinitely complex and endlessly welcoming text. The kids, already dealing with the normal, healthy pressures that anyone their age is expected to face, suddenly must deal with other pressures that they are absolutely not equipped to handle. Economic hardship, loss, divorce weigh on them. It simply isn’t fair.  

I recognize that I frequently fall victim to over-analysis. But I don’t think that’s a problem with a play like BOOTH. I take great pleasure in stepping into a strange space and mining all the meaning I can out of it. In this instance, the space is low-ceilinged, with a window to nowhere, and a mound of alien equipment on the tables. Something is very special about this place, clearly. I am so glad to be invited into it, and I hope that you’ll join me in watching these strangers go about their lives inside it.   

-Margo Skornia, dramaturg