Colaizzo - Really really: a play

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The terrific opening scene in itself justifies the advance buzz. Really Really is a take-no-prisoners indictment of the young men and women poised to inherit the earth Mr.

Colaizzo already possesses an assured appreciation of the addictive power of ambiguity, which he manipulates with a bait-and-switch mastery that never lets up Morality is not a talking point here. This is Lord of the Flies with smartphones. Ben Brantley, The New York Times A crackling new playsucks you in with its brio and caustic wit and holds you with its teasingly clever double-edged plot. Peter Marks, The Washington PostReally Really is edgy, funny, caustic, shocking brilliant. Sophie Gilbert, Washingtonian The playwright displays an undeniable gift for narrative with his gripping he said/she said plotline This provocative drama displays a crackling intensity. Hilton Als, The New Yorker

PAUL DOWNS COLAIZZOs produced plays include Really Really and Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill. Hilton Als, The New YorkerPAUL DOWNS COLAIZZOs produced plays include Really Really and Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill.

He is currently writing for HBO.

Is it generational or just a period of life? When I wrote Really Really, I was twenty-one years old, and I truly believed that my generation was headed down a very dangerous patha group of people dipped in self-centeredness and amoral choices, set only to advance ourselves, creating a society of untrustworthy narcissists. Now, Im not so sure. At twenty-eight, Im more of an adult than I was when I wrote this play, and Ive noticed a shift in myself and my peers in regard to our attitudes and outlooks on life and each other. Namely, it feels like were not as big of dicks to each other as we used to be. Why is this? Maybe we just grew up.

Or maybe I was more sensitive seven years ago than I am today. Or maybe now Ive just surrounded myself with different people who were never dicks to begin with. Was this generation once terrible and now cured? Its hard to say, since traits that are said to define all members of a generation never truly account for everybody within that group anyway. But whats easy to say is that our generation is not all bad. And furthermore, we might not be all that different from generations past. In 2012, when the play premiered in Arlington, Virginia, after five years of workshopping and rewriting the thing, I was excited to present what I considered to be a cautionary tale for my generation, an exploration of our greed and lack of empathy.

And in a way, thats exactly how the play was received. But I was surprised to find that the reactions of many older audience members were not ones of distaste or disappointment, but rather of nostalgia. Standing in the lobby of the Signature Theatre after preview performances, I spoke to audience members about their individual experiences while watching the play. I was surprised to learn of the astonishing level of relatability to the twenty-one-year-old characters from people in their sixties and upwards. That was us, a patron said to me. We were like that too.

What were these audience members telling me? Are Millennials all that different from the generations that came before us? Or are we just going along the path that everyone else has already traveled? A new study, recently published in Developmental Psychology, shows that most teenage brains actually lack a strong ability to experience empathy, and that this has nothing to do with parenting, and everything to do with the way our minds are naturally wired. This idea should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever attended high school or watched a movie that takes place in that prison/torture experiment that puts nerds and cheerleaders side-by-side. But what it does illuminate is that this idea of the selfish, horrible Millennial is a misnomer, and that the fend-for-yourself mentality that many people in college and in their early twenties espouse is just part of life. Really Really explores that period of life. Specifically, its a play that explores a group of people still in this period of development, and going through it during one of the greatest economic crises in American history. Its a play about people who were promised a world of endless opportunity and, just as that promise was set to be delivered, instead experience a threat to their once-privileged futures.

With very few jobs and very little security, in order to continue chasing his or her American dream, each student must focus on what they want, first and foremost, all while being told by experts that they are terrible people. Everything hits at once. Really Really is about a group of winners who feel the threat of losing for the very first time. P AUL D OWNS C OLAIZZO December 2013

Really Really had its world premiere at Signature Theatre, Arlington, Virginia, February 2012. Artistic Director: Eric Schaeffer, Managing Director: Maggie Boland. Directed by Matthew Gardiner, Scenic Design by Misha Kachman, Costume Design by Kathleen Geldard, Lighting Design Colin K.

Bills, Sound Design by Matt Rowe, Fight Director Casey Kaleba, New York Casting Stuart Howard & Paul Hardt, Production Stage Manager Julie Meyer. C AST:

COOPER	Evan Casey
GRACE