It’s summer in Hurt, Virginia, where a lone cabin fills each year with campers. There's homecooked breakfast and an army of box fans and lots of shifting in the dark. Welcome to Grief Camp: a study of loss and adolescence.
Grief Camp, more than most plays running nowadays, takes some creative risks in its storytelling and character development, and those risks pay off. Smith, making her off-Broadway debut, is a welcome presence on the New York theatrical scene, someone who has an uncanny ability to document the human experience and how conversations evolve and devolve based on what’s said and what’s left unsaid. This is one of the strongest shows of the off-Broadway season.
Smith’s writing shines brightest in small units, be they sentences or scenes. The six teenagers at her imagined grief camp — a ramshackle labor of love run out of the home of its founder Rocky (voiced by Danny Wolohan), who remains unseen but asserts a deeply earnest, increasingly surreal presence over the camp loudspeaker — are all weird normies, ordinary weirdos.
| 2025 | Off-Broadway |
Atlantic Theater Company World Premiere Off-Broadway |
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