Director's Notes
How the Other Half Loves is a challenging play, both for the people who put it on and the people who watch it. The play has great comedic potential, but only a relatively small amount of inherent comedy material. There really aren't a lot of jokes, puns or other comedic elements in the dialogue as it appears on the page. The comedy rests in the timing, and delivery of the lines, which mean actors have to be spot-on, not just with their own lines and blocking, but also in their interactions with each other.
Audiences, for their part, have to use their wits, attention, and a lot of the old theater standby: "willing suspension of disbelief." The set is a mishmash of two separate living rooms, each containing its own residents, who are supposed to be miles apart but who are really only a few inches from each other. During one scene, these same sets of guests arrive at two different houses, for two separate dinner parties, on two separate nights - but it's all happening at the same time. Even for regular theater patrons it may be a challenge to keep the characters mentally separated while they zip past each other, and seemingly share pieces of each other's conversations.
Just as all of us in the cast and crew have found much to love in the frantic work of meticulously ordered chaos, I hope all of you enjoy this unusual but delightful comedy.
-Eric Finn, Director