About the Play:

Swing State is a full-length drama by Rebecca Gilman. Peg's world has grown quiet since losing her husband, with only the vast beauty of her prairie land and the occasional visit from a troubled friend to keep her company. But when her late husband's belongings mysteriously vanish, Peg's decision to call in the authorities ignites a tense chain of events that leaves everyone questioning who they can trust.

Swing State is a tautly plotted drama about ecosystems, both natural and human, in peril. Recently widowed, Peg tends to the 40 acres of native prairie that rises behind her rural Wisconsin home. Her solitary days are interrupted only by visits from Ryan, a family friend with a checkered past. When her late husband's footlocker is ransacked in her barn, she places a call to the local authorities – unwittingly setting off a series of events that will forever change their lives. As Peg and Ryan fight to regain each other's trust, they learn how to help one another in a new and meaningful way and how to forge a sense of hope. Swing State is a contemporary portrait of America's heartland in a time when it feels like everyone's way of life is in danger of disappearing.

Swing State premiered in 2022 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. The production received critical acclaim, and transferred in 2023 to the Minetta Lane Theatre off-Broadway in New York City. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US.

Cast: 3 female, 1 male

What people say:

"Swing State – frugal with themes, meticulous about motivation, minutely sensitive to the timing of revelations – could serve as a case study in dramatic construction." — The New York Times

"This deeply complex … play, peopled with characters and ideas that gradually rise to the surface in a surprising climax, will leave audiences moved and saddened, only to be assuaged during the play's gentler final moments." — Chicago Theatre Review

"Perfect for this divisive and antagonistic point in history, where good intentions are often nowhere near enough." — ChicagoOnStage

"Swing State focuses, with refreshing directness and immense grace, on issues that have been dividing humankind since long before our republic was formed: community and loss, and how we all struggle to sustain a sense of the former and deal with the latter." — The New York Sun

"Gilman's drama takes audiences on a wayward chase through the pits and peaks of humanity to find the culprit. Like the dwindling prairie land, of which there is only four percent remaining in the U.S., the characters in the play must learn to fight the droughts and fires of life in order to regrow and survive." — New York Theatre Guide

"Swing State is perhaps the first of the great American post-COVID plays, the first work I've seen not just to wrestle with what happened during the pandemic but also to explore, and call out, the fundamental changes it has wrought on our collective psyche." — Chicago Tribune

"...an engrossing work of intense melancholy, filled with sympathy for its characters, and for the country...." — Chicago Sun-Times

About the Playwright:

Rebecca Gilman is an American playwright who received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Iowa in 1991. She is the first American playwright to win an Evening Standard Award for The Glory of Living (seen in the UK at the Royal Court Theatre), which also won the George Devine Award, was named one of Time magazine's Best Plays of the Decade, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been produced in the US at such venues as the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York, the Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Manhattan Class Company, in the UK at the Royal Court Theatre, as well as other theatres internationally. A native of Alabama, she was awarded the 2008 Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Most Distinguished Writer of the Year.