This is Our Youth

A modern day revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s 1982 story, This is Our Youth explores the lives of three disillusioned teens in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. On the cusp of adulthood, the wealthy, eloquent, pot smoking teenagers find themselves as the last wave of New York City’s 80s-style Liberalism; they have rejected everything they have been brought up to believe in and are left with nowhere to go. In the hilarious manner of Lonergan’s agonizing detail, This is Our Youth follows 48 hours of the youngsters lives; there’s Warren Straub, a dejected nineteen year-old who steals fifteen-thousand dollars from his abusive lingerie-tycoon father; Dennis Ziegler, his charismatic, domineering, drug-dealing friend who helps him put the money to good use; and Jessica Goldman, the anxiously insightful young woman Warren yearns for. Funny, painful, and compassionate, This is Our Youth is a living snapshot of the moment between adolescence and adulthood when many young people first go out into the world armed only with the ideas and techniques they developed as teenagers – ideas and techniques far more sophisticated than their parents realize, and far less effectual than they themselves can possibly imagine.