About the Play:

Winner of the 2021 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes is a full-length drama by Hannah Moscovitch. It details the romantic relationship between a university professor pushing 40, on the brink of divorce (his third), and a 19-year-old female superfan who sits front-row in his lectures. As their mutual admiration grows and the sexual tension escalates, the plot turns and turns again, leaving the audience to see the story from a number of perspectives.

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes looks at a relationship between a student and a teacher through a #MeToo lens. Jon is an acclaimed novelist who wants more out of life. His third marriage is going about as well as his first two, and he's stuck at university teaching creative writing to lazy undergraduates. He's a good teacher, but believes there's really only one student worth his time. Annie is clever, imaginative, and a huge fan of Jon's work. One afternoon, Jon catches himself admiring Annie in her red coat, and what unfolds seems inevitable, even as Jon resists falling into what he knows is a bad situation. But when the embers have cooled and the affair is over, who will control their narrative? As Jon brings the audience into his confidence, freely sharing his internal turmoil, Annie shows us a young woman coming into her own power. In telling this tense #MeToo-era two-hander, award-winning Canadian writer Hannah Moscovitch employs her fiery wit and incisive ability to tackle complex subjects with humour and intelligence.

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes premiered in 2019 at at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. The Australian premiere was in 2021 at the Melbourne Theatre Company and the US premiere in 2022 at Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, New York.

Cast: 1 woman, 1 man

What people say:

"Beyond providing her signature sharp sense of humour ... the intrigue in Moscovitch’s script is in discovering why she’s playing with such traditional tropes, so out of character for the playwright who has written so frankly about female sexuality." — Toronto Star

Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed Canadian playwright and TV writer. Her plays have been widely produced across Canada, as well as in the United States, Britain, Europe, Australia and Japan. She has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), and the prestigious Windham Campbell Literary Prize administered by Yale University (she is the first Canadian playwright to win the prize). She's twice been a finalist for the Governor General's Award, and twice for the Siminovitch Prize, as well as the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize honouring the best English-language women writers worldwide.