Des Moines, the final play by late American author Denis Johnson, is his first at TFANA. It is a sensationally mysterious work. Chance events—including a plane crash, a rescued wedding ring, a frightening diagnosis, and makeup advice kindly offered to a louche Catholic priest—bring a group of lonely and haunted more...
characters together for a debauch that becomes an unlikely communion. Arin Arbus directs the New York premiere of this searing and tender drama about the specter of death and the stubborn pursuit of grace among those who barely believe in it.
Arin Arbus, who has staged Shakespeare and American and European Classics for TFANA, first explored Des Moines in a TFANA workshop with Johnson. She observes, “Denis Johnson was a keen and loving observer of life. He wrote about what’s holy and hilarious and hard in our daily lives and was interested in the eternal human struggle to be awake to life in an uncontrollable and incomprehensible universe.”
