Dinner with Friends

When Karen and Gabe’s best friend Beth shows up to dinner without her husband, Tom,Karen and Gabe don’t yet realize that this is the beginning of a breakup that will rock their very foundation. As things change drastically for Beth and Tom, Karen and Gabe fight to retain the status quo, and realize that they, too, must adapt. As scenes (set mostly around meals) unfold, these four friends laugh, fight and cry about what it means to be good partners, good parents, and good friends in the modern world.

Philip Lehl as Gabe
Shelley Calene as Karen
Kim Tobin as Beth
Drake Simpson as Tom
with Jackson Foley & Kalin Black providing “kids’ voices”
- REVIEW | Houston Press: “Stark Naked Theatre Plays DINNER WITH FRIENDS to Perfection”
- INTERVIEW | Houston Public Media, The Front Row: “Stark Naked Theatre – Donald Margulies’ DINNER WITH FRIENDS”
Stage Manager | Eva De La Cruz
Assistant Director | Miguel A. Roman
Lighting & Set Design | Kevin Holden
Original Music & Sound Design | Chip Schneider
Set Construction | Anthony Contello
Costume Design & Props | Corey Stano
House Manager | Regina Ohashi
Running Crew | Lauren Ramsey
Donald Margulies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends and was a finalist twice before for Sight Unseen and Collected Stories. His many other plays, which include Long Lost, The Country House, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Brooklyn Boy, the Tony Award-nominated Time Stands Still and the Obie Award-winning The Model Apartment, have been produced on and off-Broadway and in theaters across the United States and around the world. Mr. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
He was the recipient of the 2000 Sidney Kingsley Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Theatre by a playwright. In 2005 he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an Award in Literature and by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture with its Award in Literary Arts. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was the 2014 recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award for an American Playwright in Mid-Career and the 2015 William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater. He has developed numerous screenplays, teleplays and pilots for HBO, Showtime, NBC, CBS, Warner Bros., TriStar, Universal, Paramount, and MGM. The film of his screenplay, The End of the Tour, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015, was nominated for the Film Independent Spirit Award and the UCLA Scripter Award for Best Screenplay. He is an adjunct professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale University.
(Biography from Yale University)