A Prayer for the French Republic

Joshua Harmon's "Big Boy Pants" Play

I didn’t say Big Boy Pants. An artistic director of a big theater that is a huge Joshua Harmon fan said it. A Prayer for the French Republic is Joshua Harmon’s first big 3-act play.

A Prayer for the French Republic gives voices to three generations of a family doing the emigration dance, “Should we go now?”, “How about now?”, “Is it too dangerous now?”, “Okay, but now it really is too dangerous.”, “We just got here, and we have to leave?”, “We definitely have to leave now…Maybe.” It would have to be a big 3-act, 9-actor, 14-character production to give all of the time, space and perspectives the decision to emigrate requires. Evidently, you need at least 2 hours on stage to give a young American character enough experience to see their own silliness, too.

That American character, Molly, is the reason for the season in educational theater. She will be just enough like most every American student in a school with a drama program, that everyone will be able to read her lines with a heav…