Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth is not your average play with a straightforward, linear plot. Get ready to be challenged by absurd situations, jumps in time, and actors breaking character to talk to the audience directly.

Who are these people?

The Skin of Our Teeth tells the story of George Antrobus, his wife Maggie, their two children Henry and Gladys, and their maid Sabina. But this is no ordinary family; the Antrobuses have been married for five thousand years and have endured one threat to civilization after another.

The play follows them through a series of disasters: the Ice Age, a global flood, and a war. They are one family, but they are standing in as an allegory for all of humankind. As they deal with a world always teetering on the brink of calamity, interacting with figures from myth and history, they show that humanity is enduring and life is cyclical—and there’s hope in that.

"The Skin of Our Teeth was written in the midst of apocalypse, about apocalypse… [Thornton Wilder] creates… a theatrical treadmill of entrapment for the Antrobus family, facing the end of time again and again and again, until we realize the human race is perpetually caught in crises, but also perpetually surviving." —playwright Paula Vogel

^{The cast of The Skin of Our Teeth (2024). Photo by Bronwen Houck.}

Where are we? And when?

There are three acts, each about 40 minutes long, with completely distinct settings and styles.

Act One is set in Excelsior, New Jersey in 1963, the year Seattle Rep was founded. Act Two is set in at a political convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey in summer 2024, and Act Three is set in a not-too-distant future warzone.

However, throughout the play, we are also at Seattle Rep, in a world made up of actors telling us this story. The characters will break away from the dialogue to speak directly to you, the audience. They have some questions about this show, too!

"I don’t understand a single word of [this play], anyway—all about the troubles the human race has gone through, there’s a subject for you. Besides the author hasn’t made up his silly mind as to whether we’re all living back in caves or in New Jersey, and that’s the way it is all the way through." —Sabina, Act I

Remember, there are two intermissions! Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion to this epic experience.

Still need your tickets? Purchase today! The Skin of Our Teeth is now playing through Oct. 20 at Seattle Rep.

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