About the Play:

Make Believe is a full-length drama by Bess Wohl. The ghosts of childhood never disappear. In the attic of one family's home, four young siblings are playing house in a game of make-believe. Meanwhile, the world beneath them holds a more ominous reality. Make Believe is a thoughtful exploration of childhood and its lingering impact.

Make Believe is about the mysteries of childhood and the things that haunt us forever. When does real life collide with make believe? It's 1980 in the Conlee family's attic playroom, and four young siblings – Chris, Kate, Carl and Addie – recreate their everyday lives in a colourful game of make believe. Just home from school, they expect snacks, unwind from the day, and irk one another. Everything seems ordinary – until their parents inexplicably disappear. The children, ages 5 to 10, play and play, but where are their parents? Fast-forward 30 years and now adults returning to their childhood attic, the search for answers continues – only this time the game's over, and a troubled past needs reconciliation. Split into two halves set three decades apart, Make Believe features four child actors and their adult counterparts in a provocative story that bends time, space, and narrative. Make Believe is a rich and moving psychological drama that invites the audience to rethink their own childhood experiences and explore the questions we carry with us.

Make Believe premiered in 2018 at Hartford Stage, a Tony Award-winning regional theatre in downtown Hartford, Connecticut. The New York premiere was in 2019 at Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theatre. It opened to rave reviews and enjoyed an extended Off-Broadway run, with the New York Times naming it a Critic's Pick. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male, 2 girls, 2 boys

What people say:

"Make Believe is a rich and moving contemporary drama…[Wohl's] formal daring, her precise calibration of humor and despair, her confidence and anger and empathy, all mingled, lift Make Believe into the realm where even naturalism becomes a great mystery." — New York Times

"… Make Believe is beautifully accessible. As an audience member, you are not only allowed to figure out this play by yourself, but you can, precisely because it is so excellently written…There is no way to see Make Believe and leave unmoved. It is a profoundly affecting, harrowing work that will force you to think – to re-think, perhaps – your own childhood and what from it you are still carrying around. Get ready for an emotional night of reckoning that you will never forget." — Medium

"[Make Believe] achieves the near-impossible: capturing the world through the eyes of children and their adult selves while adeptly avoiding fantasy, nostalgia, and sentimentality…Bess Wohl's Make Believe is a masterful exploration of childhood and its lingering impact…Tragic, funny, mysterious, and true, it is easily among the best plays I have seen all year." — Stage Left

About the Playwright:

Bess Wohl is an American playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker. She began her career as an actress, earning an MFA from Yale, and has since become a writer, developing for the stage, motion pictures, and television.