Door Wide Open

Door Wide Open is a new play based on the love letters of novelist Johnson and infamous Beat poet Jack Kerouac. In January, 1957 Allen Ginsberg set up a blind date between 34 year-old Jack Kerouac and 21year-old Joyce Johnson. The two began a stormy love affair that lasted for 22 months — a period which included the publishing of Kerouac’s seminal work On The Road. Kerouac spent much of his time drinking and traveling — roaming Africa with William Burroughs, visiting his mother in Florida, and on a national publicity tour — writing to Johnson throughout. Door Wide Open uses Jack and Joyce’s actual letters to chronicle an ill-fated, tempestuous relationship between two writers.