Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A man sets out on an ordinary business trip to Valparaiso, Indiana. It turns out to be a mock-heroic journey toward identity and transcendence.
Don DeLillo's second play is funny, sharp, and deep-reaching. Its characters have needs and desires shaped by the forces of broadcast technology. They talk the way we do today, telling each other things in public, before listening millions, that we don't dare to say privately. In the world of Michael and Livia, and the people who interview them incessantly, nothing is allowed to be unseen. Nothing remains unsaid. And everything melts repeatedly into something else, as if driven by, the finger on the TV remote.
Hyper-present and mythically true, Valparaiso makes poetry out of the language of routine airline announcements and the flow of endless information.
Valparaiso will have its premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in early 1999.
About the Author
Don DeLillo is the author of eleven novels, including White Noise, Libra, and Underworld, and one previous play, The Day Room. He has won the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.