In “You Better Sit Down,” the company interviews their own parents

The Civilians wanted to write a play about divorce. That much they knew.

“I remember being incensed by the movie Stepmom because I was like, ‘That’s not what it’s like,’” says playwright-performer Jennifer R. Morris, whose parents got divorced when she was young. “I felt like there was a dearth [of good material]. As a subject matter, it seemed like something that affected so many people.”

What began as a concept took over five years to translate into You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents’ Divorce, the latest project from Civilians that uses the real words of real people to explore a major social theme. (Pervious works have tackled Evangelical Christianity, climate change, and gentrification.)

Often, the story of a Civilians production reveals itself as the company interviews experts, figureheads, and everyday people. This means the company members are passionate outsiders looking in, and while their shows are always emotional, they also contain a thoughtful detachment.

But You Better Sit Down, now playing at the Flea Theatre through May 6, springs from a much more personal place.

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Complex emotion in a Neil Simon revival

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When you hear the name “Neil Simon,” you might think of knee-slappers like The Odd Couple, but recently, several directors have been working to expand his legacy.

David Cromer’s woefully short-lived Broadway revival of Brighton Beach Memoirs found delicate drama inside family comedy, and in her current remount of Lost In Yonkers for The Actors Company Theatre, Jenn Thompson places loneliness and hope next to rat-a-tat laughs.

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Tug Coker as Larry Bird

How playwright Eric Simonson made theatre out of basketball stars

In the space of eight years, Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. won a combined six NBA championships. Bird and Magic, as they’re still known worldwide, represent a combined 13.5 feet of grit, skill, and nearly unprecedented basketball smarts, resulting in perhaps the most storied rivalry in modern sports.

According to playwright Eric Simonson, they also represent “the better angels of the collective unconscious of the country.” That’s how he describes the joint protagonists—bitter rivals turned battle-scarred friends—of his play Magic/Bird, which is now in previews at the Longacre Theatre.

Simonson, who is reteaming with the director (Thomas Kail) and producers of the football-themed play Lombardi, would appear to be an unlikely candidate for go-to sports scribe. His resume includes adaptations of Moby Dick and Slaughterhouse-Five, collaborations with poet/playwright Ntozake Shange and African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and a documentary short about the radio dramatist Norman Corwin that won an Academy Award in 2006.

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We ask the director of “Rated P For Parenthood”

What does it take to direct a revue? A typical show follows one group of characters through a single story, but a revue, with its collection of songs and sketches, introduces new people and new situations every few minutes. How does a director make it all feel coherent?

That’s a question for Jeremy Dobrish, director of the musical-comedy pastiche Rated P for Parenthood. Running through April 8 at the Westside Theatre, the show gently pokes fun at parenting foibles, with four actors playing various parents and children. As Dobrish says, his challenge became, “How do you keep the audience following not just each protagonist for three minutes, but an overall sense of the journey of the show?”

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A new play takes its time at MTC

How long does it take to build a fire? Make a can of soup? Repair a table that an angry drunk smashed to pieces?

To find out, you can time the scenes in Regrets, Manhattan Theatre Club’s carefully paced new drama, now at City Center.

Set in Nevada in 1954, the play follows life in a “divorce camp.” Sixty years ago, Nevada had the most liberal divorce laws in the country, so men would move there just long enough to establish residency and split from their wives. Sometimes, they lived in special campgrounds, forming temporary communities of the listless and the lonely.

In Regrets , the community mixes card games and beer runs with unpleasant secrets, and the consequences get heavy. If we feel those consequences, it’s arguably because the play takes its time defining them. Scenes are long and conversations are rich, and if someone sweeps the floor, he sweeps the entire thing. This creates a methodical calm, even as emotions flare.

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