Chautauqua Theater Company Guest Artist Ceci Fernandez, center, performs as Ernestine with, from left, CTC Conservatory Actor Amara Leonard, Guest Artist Alex Weisman, and Conservatory Actors Kay Benson, Kamal Sehrawy and Martin Lewis during a tech rehearsal of Birthday Candles Wednesday in Bratton Theater.
As Chautauqua Institution celebrates its sesquicentennial, Chautauqua Theater Company will stage its first full production of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles, a story that follows one ordinary woman through nine decades of her life.
Originally developed as a New Play Workshop in 2017 under the direction of Vivienne Benesch, CTC’s artistic director at the time, Birthday Candles finally made its Broadway debut in 2022. Delayed by two years because of the pandemic, the Broadway run also saw Benesch at the helm, with Debra Messing in the lead role. It’s been performed across the country and around the world, including a Hebrew translation for a production in Israel.
Now, it’s coming home to Chautauqua.
“It’s a beautiful, bittersweet play of the magnitude of life told through the seemingly simple moments,” said CTC Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll.
Ernestine Ashworth ponders her life’s purpose on her 17th birthday as she gathers ingredients for a simple butter cake. As time flashes forward, the play travels through 90 years of her birthdays as she recreates the same cake, experiences joy and heartbreak, and cherishes the small moments that fill her life with meaning.
Previews begin at 7:30 p.m. tonight in Bratton Theater, with more performances this weekend. Directed by Arya Shahi, the show will officially open at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in Bratton.
Haidle is from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Birthday Candles takes place, and he never dreamed of becoming a playwright. Now a graduate of Princeton University who went on to Julliard’s playwriting program, he had every intention in his youth of becoming a philosophy professor.
He was never interested in theater until he read Death of a Salesman his junior year of high school, and that was the moment he realized he wanted to write plays.
He began reading thousands of plays, beginning with Jesse Lynch Williams’ Why Marry?, as he took notes.
“My theory was that if I ingested enough information, at some point I would be able to synthesize something of my own,” he said.
Now, Haidle’s plays have been produced at theaters like South Coast Repertory, The Long Wharf Theater and at others around the country and the world.
Inspired by Thornton Wilder’s A Long Christmas Dinner, a play that drops in on certain Christmases of a family, he got the idea for Birthday Candles when his friend’s 8-year-old daughter asked her mother, “Have I wasted my life?”
He thought that was a peculiar question to ask at that age. The question became the opening line of the play.
Haidle also remembered learning in college that goldfish have a three-second memory span. In the show, Ernestine’s nerdy and awkward nextdoor neighbor, Kenneth, brings her a goldfish on her 17th birthday; the goldfish is a constant presence throughout the play.
During the writing process, he found himself creating characters that mirrored parts of himself and people close to him, but said part of theater magic is hiding himself in the story.
“Writing a play is like writing an emotional autobiography, and it’s a fun way of exposing yourself but also hiding yourself,” he said.
Chautauqua’s version of Birthday Candles is Haidle’s first production where he hasn’t been involved with the rehearsal process, and he said he is eager to see how the actors and creative team have put their own spin on the story.
Watching his own plays be performed is something he said takes getting used to, but he is looking forward to seeing how the Chautauqua audience reacts.
“Watching an audience watch your play is like watching a dream with a bunch of other people,” he said. “You’re sort of in control of that dream, but really not at the same time.”
As Chautauqua mounts its first full production of Birthday Candles, Haidle said he hopes it serves as an example of CTC’s continued commitment to developing new plays.
“It’s great for audiences in Chautauqua to know that their support allows for that possible journey,” he said.
