Playwright Kristine Thatcher picked up where she and actor-playwright Larry Shue (The Nerd, The Foreigner) left off over 30 years ago with the world premiere of Waiting for Tina Meyer, a romantic comedy that the pair began cowriting decades ago and that reads in its completed form like William Inge crossed with Samuel Beckett, mixed with a hefty dollop of When Harry Met Sally.
“To me this piece is about living life to the fullest. And being open to connecting to people that you might look at and think, ‘these aren’t the people I’d choose to spend time with,’ people we regard as ‘other,’” Hoffmann said. “Walk into any gathering and what’s the first thing you do? You scan the room. Race, gender, how people are dressed—they’re all things we use to determine who we hang out with, who we believe we’ll relate to. Or not.
The Nerd went to Broadway in 1987, but Shue didn’t live to see it. The one-time Glen Ellyn resident was killed, along with 13 other people, in a plane crash on September 23, 1985. He’d been preparing to make his Broadway debut as an actor in The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
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