Unapologetically academic, working class, and by-a-philly-playwright, Essential Reading is an odyssey of the mind. Language twists and contorts based on whether or not a scene is a dream, and soon enough you're doubting your own reality. The miracle of making an academic beef premise build into a generational socio-economic heartbreak about failing, failing, failing on your dreams..

"It’s not special; it’s not interesting; it’s just work and then you die, right?"

Great shit.

ESSENTIAL READING FOR THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY is just what the title claims it to be. Essential reading. Walsh really went to town when putting this play together. The characters are nuanced and interesting. The story is gripping, tragic, and darkly humorous. Eddie is the type of role that actors dream of.

An incredibly creative and inventive exploration of whiteness, masculinity and masculine identity, class, academia, the evolving mythology around American identity, the intersection of tall of those things, and so much more! Eddie was quite the nucleus around which the play revolved, and his presence and maddening, harrowing, hilarious journey kept things so incredibly focused even with the pliability of space, time, and reality...allowing the piece of go in very epic and heady directions without losing its human core. I would so love to see this on its feet and in production.