Shooting Star

December 8, 2026 – January 2, 2027 · Shows at 7:00pm

Red Barn Theatre, 319 Duval Street (rear)

The Red Barn opens its holiday slot with Shooting Star, a two-hander by Steven Dietz, one of the most widely produced playwrights working in American theater. The setup is simple enough to describe in a sentence: two people who were together in college get snowed in overnight at a middling airport in the middle of the country and find themselves face to face for the first time in years.

What follows is the whole play — no scene changes, no third character, nowhere for either of them to go. They talk. They avoid talking. They circle the years between then and now, the versions of themselves the other still half-expects, and the question of what they actually meant to each other. Dietz keeps it funny throughout, and the comedy does most of the heavy lifting until it quietly stops being only funny.

The Red Barn production stars Dave Bootle and Lauren Thompson, with Joy Hawkins directing. It’s ideal material for a house this size — the Red Barn seats fewer than a hundred, and a play built entirely on two people reading each other across a row of airport chairs lands very differently at close range. Several extra Monday performances have been added over the holidays.

Schedule subject to change. Information courtesy of Red Barn Theatre — visit redbarntheatre.com for tickets and complete details.