UTILITY

"Like I gotta lose just about everything I used to like about myself 
Just so I can keep shit even halfway decent for everyone else around here.”

Photo by Russ Rowland

Amber has two jobs, three kids and an 8 year old’s birthday party to plan. Her on again-off again husband, Chris, is back on and determined to help out the best he can. Sometimes that’s good enough.

As Amber struggles with a tiny avalanche of day-to-day setbacks, she finds this life has made her a stranger to the person she once was and the person she thought she would be.

• 2016 Yale Drama Series Prize
​• 2016 New York Times Critic's Pick
• 2016 New York Innovative Theatre Award for
    Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play
• 2017 Francesca Primus Prize finalist
​• 2018 Off West End Awards nomination for Best New Play

PRODUCTIONS

​Midwest Premiere
Interrobang Theatre Project
Directed by Georgette Verdin
April-May 2019

​UK Premiere
Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond
Directed by Caitlin McLeod
June-July 2018

World Premiere
The Amoralists Theatre Company
​Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in New York City
Directed by Jay Stull
January-February 2016

PUBLICATION

​Published by Yale University Press, 2017
with a foreward by Nicholas Wright

Find it at Drama Book Shop, Yale University Press, or Amazon.

PRESS

​Critic's Pick "Ms. Schwend offers a close, unblinking look at a moment in the life of a woman who’s treading water as fast as she can, trying to keep her family afloat."  Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times

★★★★ "As Utility so gently but bitingly reminds us, the best drama doesn’t need to crash about to be effective." Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

★★★★ "Brings an unpatronising candour to its graceful, low-key depiction of life in breadline America." Maxie Szalwinska,  The Sunday Times

★★★★"The political and dramatic significance of Schwend’s play lies in texture, rather than incident...Cleverly, Schwend steers away from plot-twists you expect to become momentous." Sarah Hemming, Financial Times
​
"More than any reporter I am aware of, Emily Schwend is giving us honest dispatches from the so-called silent majority that our politicians have been taking advantage of for decades." Joe Meyers, Connecticut Post