About the Play:

This Is How It Goes is a full-length drama by Neil LaBute, which unblinkingly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America.

Belinda and Cody Phipps "appear" to be a typical American couple: teenage sweethearts now married with children and a luxurious home. Typical except that Cody is in almost every respect an outsider - "rich, black, and different," in the words of Belinda, who finds herself attracted to a white former classmate who has recently returned to town. As the battle for her affections is waged against a backdrop as seemingly serene as a Norman Rockwell painting, Belinda and Cody frankly question the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry, deception, and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our received notions about gender, ethnicity, and even love itself.

Cast: 1 woman, 2 men

What people say:

"Neil LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard — since Edward Albee, actually — to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power." — New York Post

"Neil LaBute [is] our American Aesop, a mad moral fabulist serving stiff tonic for our country's sin-sick souls." — American Theatre

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.