AND SO IT GOES Launches Artists Rep's 30th Anniversary Season, 9/4

Artists Rep begins their 30th Anniversary season on September 4 with the World Premiere of Aaron Posner's And So It Goes…, directed by Posner. This quirky love letter to the human race flows from Kurt Vonnegut's first collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House. The play runs through October 7 on the Alder Stage, 1516 SW Alder, Portland, OR 97205.

Can we ever protect ourselves from the idiocy of our hearts? Down a well-worn path, hand-in-hand, take a walk…through leaves and over bridges, breathe in the soul's seductive moments through three love stories set in mythologicAl Small-town America. It's 1962 New England when we join Tom, our tour guide, for a stroll with a host of hearts just like our own. Along the circuitous course of love we travel with our new friends hoping to catch a genuine glimpse of humankind's most elusive sentiment in the wonderfully flawed characters muddling along before us.

Playwright and Director Aaron Posner wrote the first version of And So It Goes…, under the title Who Am I This Time?, in the 1980s while at Philadelphia's Arden Theatre. He said back then adaptation was often done in a strictly narrative style, that it was just a matter of "taking short stories and doing them on stage."

25 years later, after several more incarnations of that production and an even deeper understanding and appreciation of Kurt Vonnegut's work, Posner wrote And So It Goes….
"My imagination weaved the stories together in a more fluid, connective way," he said at the production's first rehearsal.

Posner referenced what Critic Robert Scholes said about the author of 14 novels including Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle: "Kurt Vonnegut puts bitter coating on sweet pills." Posner said it is Vonnegut's ability to "portray the difficulties of being human beings with optimism, hopefulness, love and texture" that enables his stories to come to life on the stage.