A Mile in the Dark

What happens when a single unanswered question turns a loved one into a stranger?
Jess' stepmother Carol was cheerful, generous, and seemingly at peace — until her unexpected death leaves behind questions no one seems ready, or able, to answer. As Jess tries to understand what happened, the ground beneath her begins to shift. Memory becomes unreliable. Familiar relationships turn strange. Every detail feels charged with meaning, and every answer seems to open into another uncertainty.
Emily Schwend’s A Mile in the Dark is an eerie, intimate drama about grief, suspicion, and the altered state we can enter when loss collides with fear. As Jess begins to question the people around her, the play widens into something even more unsettling: a portrait of how relationships shape us and how the truth can threaten the stories we build in order to feel safe.
*Michigan Premiere*

 

 

 

 

About the director:
Kyle Los is the Executive and Artistic Director of Actors’ Theatre and is a multidisciplinary theatre artist working in West Michigan as a Director, Sound Designer, Composer, Scenic Designer, and Actor. His directing credits include: HYENAS (Director), PARADISE LOST (Assistant Director), PETTY CRIMES (Co-Director), HUNDRED DAYS (Director), SWEAT (Co-Director), and AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (Assistant Director) with Actors’ Theatre, EURYDICE (Assistant Director) with Grand Rapids Community College, THE FOREIGNER (Assistant Director) with Aquinas College, and THE MOTHERFUCKER WITH THE HAT (Assistant Director) with Mixed Roots Collective. As an actor, he was most recently seen on stage as Frank in WITCH with Actors’ Theatre, and has received Grand Awards for his performances in HAIR (Circle Theatre Grand Rapids), and VENUS IN FUR and OTHER DESERT CITIES (Actors’ Theatre). He was recognized as a part of the Grand Rapids “40 Under Forty” in 2014.

 

About the playwright:
Emily Schwend's plays include UTILITY (The Amoralists in NYC, Orange Tree Theatre in London, Interrobang Theatre Project in Chicago, 2016 Yale Drama Series Award, 2017 IT Award for Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play), THE OTHER THING (Second Stage Theatre Uptown), TAKE ME BACK (Walkerspace in NYC, The Poor Theatre in Chicago), SOUTH OF SETTLING (Steppenwolf's Next Up Rep), and SPLINTERS (CUDC Source Festival). She was a 2016-2017 Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard University and the inaugural 2014 Tow Foundation playwright-in-residence at Second Stage Theatre. Her work has been developed at The New Group, Roundabout Theatre Company, ACT Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Partial Comfort Productions, Ars Nova, the Alliance Theatre, PlayPenn, and the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, among others. She is a frequent contributor to Christine Jones’s Theatre for One booth. She is the recipient of a Bogliasco Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship, the ACT New Play Award, the David Calicchio Emerging American Playwrights Prize, the Lecomte du Nouy Prize, and the Heideman Prize. Her work has been commissioned by the Studio Theatre in DC, the Ensemble Studio Theatre through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Old Vic in London. Emily also works as a science communicator in the biotech and biopharma hub of Cambridge, MA. She is a proud alumna of the playwriting programs at Juilliard and Tisch.