About the Play:

The Way We Get By is a full-length dramatic comedy by Neil LaBute. A guy, a girl and a fly on the wall audience. The Way We Get By follows two people who wake up together following a drunken wedding reception they both attended. Forced to question how much they really know about each other and how much they care about what other people think, the two face a very awkward encounter revolving around lust, life and love.

The Way We Get By is set in the aftermath of a one-night stand. Middle of the night. Now. Meet Beth and Doug: two people who have no problem getting dates with their partners of choice. They meet at a drunken wedding reception and end up spending one hot night together at an apartment Beth shares with her control freak roommate. Unable to sleep, Doug gets up in the middle of the night and inadvertently wakes Beth to a blurry morning where the rules of attraction, sex, and society are waiting for them before their first cup of coffee. The two begin some humorously awkward conversation that veers toward their love lives before Beth, wanting to get intimate again, meets with resistance from Doug. After she probes as to why Doug doesn't want to jump back into bed with her, he reveals not only his feelings but a surprising bond they share from the past. Fast-moving, sexy and surprisingly poignant The Way We Get By is a sharp, sexy, fresh look at love, relationships, and the awkward moments in between.

The Way We Get By premiered in 2015 at Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theatre and enjoyed an extended run off-Broadway in New York City. The play has been performed in regional and fringe theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 1 male

What people say:

"[LaBute] has done something unique to his brand of well-established playwriting genre; that is of the darkly cynical variety. The Way We Get By is a good play with an important conundrum (which I won't ruin for you), with a positive and hopeful ending, (that much I will ruin for you). It actually feels good in our ever wary world to see that problems, no matter how challenging, can be worked out and realized without the usual, ‘Maybe I should have slit my wrists long ago,' attitudes of characters with complex lives. After all, everything is complex these days." — Huffington Post

"Sexy, starry, dangerously irresistible! …[Neil LaBute] relishes the art of thwarting expectations." — The New York Times

"One-night stands often produce repercussions, but few are as emotionally fraught as the one depicted in Neil LaBute's [The Way We Get By]… the playwright's gift for amusing banter is very much on display." — Hollywood Reporter

"[Neil LaBute's] sometimes brutal wit has long been accompanied by an equally fierce moral curiosity…if we see Doug and Beth's struggle in the context of a world where everyone can seem to be in everyone else's business – especially when it's trivial – the focus is on two individuals trying to assess their own capacity for courage." — USA Today

About the Playwright:

Neil LaBute is an award-winning American playwright, filmmaker, and screenwriter. His plays include bash, Reasons to be Pretty (Tony Award nominated for best play), In a Forest, Dark and Deep, and Reasons to be Happy. His films include In the Company of Men (New York Critics' Circle Award for Best First Feature and the Filmmaker Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival), Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty, Possession, The Shape of Things, Some Velvet Morning, and Dirty Weekend. He is a 2013 recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.