The setup: Like Danny, the hero of his currently popular play The Submission, writer Jeff Talbott is a Yale Drama School grad who's finished a handful of full-length scripts that haven't really gone anywhere -- until now. (Talbott does have a festival reading of his newest work, A Public Education, scheduled at Salt Lake City's Pioneer Theatre Company this weekend if you happen to be there.) What's a great relief to audiences of normal people is that The Submission isn't really a navel-gazing story about a bunch of Ivy League-educated theater folk; it's about how far a person might go once he's taken the exit to Bad Idea Town because the needle's on empty.
When iTheatre Collaborative had trouble casting By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, the play it had announced for this slot in the 2013-14 season, they were able to get the rights to The Submission. Staged with support from iTheatre's frequent collaborative partner, ASU West's School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, the show is provocative, funny, troublesome, and a good fit for the troupe's mission of inclusive multiculturalism.
