Fall Festival to Present Amy Herzog’s Obie-Winning “4000 Miles”

By Susan L. Peña

Amy Herzog’s Obie Award-winning 2011 play, “4,000 Miles,” explores politics, generational conflict and grief through the relationship between a nonagenerian grandmother and her troubled grandson, who shows up at her door unexpectedly during his ill-fated cross-country bike ride.

The play, which won an Obie Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama, will be presented by the Fall Festival of the Arts on Friday, Nov. 6 at 7:30 in the WCR Center for the Arts. It will be directed by Julia Matthews, retired Albright College associate professor of theater and Associate Dean for Academic Success, and will star retired Kutztown University professor Roxane Rix in the lead role of Vera, the grandmother.

Matthews—who regularly directed for the Domino Players at Albright and was a dramaturg, director and teacher with theater companies in Atlanta, GA—said she is excited to be making her debut as a director for the Fall Festival. When she was approached by FFA board chair Susan Wagner, Matthews said, “I suggested a couple of plays that I thought would work well in the WCR space, and this was the one Susan and the board were most interested in. And I’m a big fan of Amy Herzog.”

Although she has not seen “4,000 Miles” performed live, Matthews said she was intrigued by “this relationship between an elderly woman and this young man, who don’t know each other. . . I have often assigned scenes from Herzog’s plays, especially for the senior seminar, because she writes really well for actors, in a realistic way, with very American characters. Her plays are sensitive and smart, and they’re often quiet plays.”

While she was still in the process of casting the production during this interview, she had selected Rix first because “she is a wonderful actress and director, and I’m really excited she is able to do the project.” (Vera’s grandson Leo, Leo’s girlfriend Bec and Leo’s Chinese-American friend Amanda will be cast soon; more information will be available as we update this story.)

As the play unfolds, Matthews said, it becomes apparent that Vera and her late husband were activists in the Communist party during the 1940s and ‘50s, and while Leo is a 21st-century liberal, their ideas clash in regard to politics, gender issues and relationships.

Leo, consumed by grief after the tragic loss of his friend and traveling companion, shows up at Vera’s home after a period of being out of touch with everyone else in his life. She takes him in, and as they get reacquainted, they “annoy, baffle and amuse each other,” Matthews said. He brings Amanda to Vera’s apartment after picking her up at a club, and when Bec arrives, lively conversations ensue. “Bec is furious with Leo for disappearing and Amanda has a big reaction to the Communist stuff.”

Because the time frame is circa 2005, she said, it is interesting to compare Leo to young people in the 2020s, post-Covid and amid ever-more-ubiquitous cell phones and other devices. “Leo’s dilemmas and loneliness seem somewhat old-fashioned compared to kids now,” she said.

Matthews, during her tenure at Albright, directed the Domino Players in many performances, including Lorraine Hansbury’s “A Raisin in the Sun.” The production won nine national Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival awards in 2019, including Distinguished Director of a Play or Musical, Outstanding Production of a Play, along with four awards for performances, technical direction, scenic design and lighting. Through many years, the Albright theater department has won multiple awards and nominations in the festival.

Prior to joining the Albright faculty, Matthews earned her bachelor’s degree in acting from the North Carolina School of the Arts and her master’s degree and Ph.D. in dramatic literature from the University of St. Andrews and the University of Warwick, U.K. She has taught at Wesleyan College and Kennesaw State University.

Rix, who retired from KU in 2016 after 30 years of teaching in the theater department, earned her MFA in directing from the University of Minnesota, her Certificate in Acting and Directing from Sonia Moore’s American Stanislavski Theatre, and, in 1993 became certified to teach the Alba Method after studying with Susana Bloch in Chile. She is also a founder of Alba Emoting North America. The method is based on experiments in the psychophysiology of human emotions by Bloch and Guy Santibañez in the early 1970s.

Hertzog, in addition to the two plays mentioned above, has written “Belleville” (2013) and the Tony-nominated “Mary Jane” (2017). She has won Tony Awards for her adaptations of the Henrik Ibsen plays “A Doll’s House” (2023) and “Enemy of the People” (2024). She is married to the director Sam Gold, who directed “Enemy of the People.”

For complete information on the Fall Festival of the Arts, presented by Trinity Lutheran Church and Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Reading, and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.fallfestivalofthearts.org/.