About the Show
Playwright and director Melanie Maria Goodreaux marks 25 years of creating theater in New York City with the world premiere of How to Get to Heaven from the Crawfish Pond, running November 5–22 at Theater for the New City.
In this new play, Crawfish farmer Earl Roussel has been dead for ten years when he wakes up in a Purgatory that looks suspiciously like his own front yard. His wife, Ruth, is on her deathbed but escapes at night to reconnect with him. Their estranged children return carrying old resentments, missing money and unresolved feelings about their father, while two nuns may have plans of their own.
Set in Louisiana and infused with Goodreaux’s blend of magical realism, surreal comedy, spirituality and poetry, How to Get to Heaven from the Crawfish Pond asks what we owe the people we love before, and perhaps even after, death. As Earl and Ruth refuse to let mortality separate them, their children must confront what the family has buried, both literally and figuratively.
