We're Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time at Goodman Theatre

Growing up in an industrial English town, writer and performer David Cale escaped his parents’ fraught marriage by singing in his bedroom and tending to the tropical birds in the bird and animal hospital he built in a garden shed—until a tragedy changed everything. Weaving together lushly arranged songs and an intimately detailed portrait of his mother, a charismatic woman trapped by her circumstances, Cale embodies this vivid musical story of transcendence, of connecting to life when adversity is suddenly everywhere. With his “singular fusion of theater and performance art” (Chicago Tribune), Cale makes “reality and fantasy dissolve into stories as memorable as one's most vivid dreams” (The New York Times).