A young woman named Truly has spent years in and out of hospitals, combating serious illness since she was a child. When we meet her, in a room at the end of the hall, she is on her way to recovery; she’ll be going home soon, with every likelihood of a “normal” life. And that possibility terrifies her – when the struggle is gone, when the life ahead can be lived apart from the identity of illness, it is a foreign country, a distant planet without the “thing” that has defined you. It might as well be the moon. Truly deals with her uncertainty by writing bad songs, reading odd old books and communing with an unseen voice in the night: an old-school late-night jazz radio announcer, a world-weary storyteller who connects with this person in her room.

Following the standing-room-only production of Tom Waits For No Man, and the premiere of Bucket Boy, we return to the White House for the original play Destination Moon. It features actress Emilie Scheetz, vocalist Lauren Carder, and the piano work of John O’Leary (La Lucha), who will play his composed and improvised “soundtrack” live on stage.