Jobsite Theater | This is How it Goes

"It is edgy, challenging, profane, violent and raw, sometimes offensive, sometimes shocking, but always, always riveting.... This is actors' theater at its best and exciting to watch." – Tampa Tribune

"This Is How It Goes is a very fresh and often very funny twist on a romantic comedy it's good old-fashioned black-box theater. The characters are rich and interesting, and the actors make the most of them." – St. Petersburg Times

"4 stars. A top-notch Jobsite production.... Easily [LaBute's] most profound, incisive and far-reaching play." – Creative Loafing

This is How it Goes

By Neil Labute
Directed by Ami Sallee Corley
Jan. 25 – Feb. 11, 2007
Thu. – Sat. 8pm, Sun. 4pm
Single tickets: $19.50 – $24.50
Shimberg Playhouse, TBPAC

Winner!

Creative Loafing 2007 Top Ten Production

The southeastern US premiere! The black jock, the fat dork and the white cheerleader – 12 years later. In true Neil LaBute (The Shape of Things, Fat Pig, In the Company of Men) fashion, 45-degree turns run rampant, keeping both the audience and characters on their toes. He targets small town middle America for a new tale of manipulation, exploitation, race and infidelity through the story of an interracial love triangle.

Jobsite Presents (Clock. from top) Ryan McCarthy, Heather Scheffel & David Dolphy in This is How it Goes.

Click to enlarge

"Neil LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard – since Edward Albee, actually – to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power." – Donald Lyons, New York Post

"LaBute [is] our American Aesop, a mad moral fabulist serving stiff tonic for our country's sin – sick souls." – John Istel, American Theatre

Belinda and Cody Phipps are a typical Midwestern couple: teenage sweethearts, children, luxurious home. Typical... except Cody is "rich, black and different," according to Belinda, who is white and becomes attracted to a former classmate (Ryan McCarthy) who is also white and acts as the show's untrustworthy narrator.

As the men battle for her affections, Belinda and Cody frankly doubt the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our notions about gender, ethnicity and even love itself, This Is How It Goes fearlessly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America.

Cast & Crew

This is How it Goes stars two newcomers, Heather Scheffel and David Dolphy, and Jobsite stalwart, Ryan McCarthy. The show is directed by veteran Jobsite artistic associate Ami Sallee Corley, who directed the wildly popular productions of A Girl's Guide to Chaos and Cloud Nine, which earned Best Play and Best Director from Weekly Planet in 2003.