About The Play
Dotty’s life in Sterno with her husband Hamel is absolutely perfect! It’s a fairy tale, it really is. True, in their seven years of marriage Hamel has forbidden her to leave their tiny apartment or speak to anyone, but Dotty is so very happy to spend her days in the same dizzy cycle of watching video re-enactments of the day they first met, doing Hamel’s laundry, and making him his special happy-face hamburger. When a phone call from a mysterious woman threatens to tear her marriage apart, Dotty must venture out into the vast city of Sterno and try to discover what it is to be a “real” woman. Wickedly funny, Out of Sterno explores the triumph and heartbreak of growing up and the contradictory societal pressures women face just trying to make it across town.

Why It’s for You
You may not live in the same town as Dotty—and we can bet you don’t spend your days in a cartoon-like apartment making kindergarten-inspired art projects—but you’ve asked yourself the same questions raised by Out of Sterno. What does it mean to be a woman or a man in today’s world? Who says so? Does it matter what other people think? This show examines all of these questions and more as it takes a hilariously clever look at the influences that shape our own self-images.