INITIATIVE
by Else Went
Directed by Emma Rosa Went
Public Theater, Nov-Dec 2025 — World Premiere
Vulture’s BEST PLAYS of 2025
Featuring: Olivia Rose Barresi, Greg Cuellar, Harrison Densmore, Carson Higgins, Andrea Lopez Alvarez, Jamie Sanders, Christopher Dylan White, with offstage voices performed by Brandon Burk. Understudies: Marisa Brau-Reyes & Jose Useche
Scenic by Mikiko Suzuki Macadams
Lighting by Chris Akerlind
Video by S. Katy Tucker
Sound by Angela Baughman
Costumes by Kindall Almond
Costume design dramaturgy by Susan Hilferty
Dramaturgy by Sarah Lunnie
Intimacy by Laura Hackman
Fights by Dan Renkin
Props by Aisha Hamida
Associate director Tessa Bagby
Associate dramaturg Harris Kiernan
PSM Janelle Caso
Stage Manager Molly Foy
PA Emma Battle
Script PA Dailee Morrone
“ …the show has both the patience and the pain of maturity. It feels slow-cooked, basted in rich juices and allowed to simmer.”
"Initiative is — to steal a “good 50-cent word” from one of its characters — elegiac. It’s about loss and survival and the way in which imagination can become as tangible and critical as a climbing rope on a cliff face.”
”profoundly moving in its generosity”
"it might take you back, but its real achievement, bracing and compassionate, lies in its encouragement to keep walking forward.”
-Sara Holdren, Vulture
“Else Went's ambitious high school drama makes a big ask: five hours of your time to watch seven teenagers grow up in a sleepy coastal California small town. Witty, evocative, and ever-prescient, the emotional saga at NYC's Public Theater is well worth every second.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“The most moving act of kindness I’ve seen onstage this year”
-Jackson McHenry, Vulture
“… I so admired its ambition and frequent beauty. Else Went’s five hour show about a ‘coastal podunk’ teenage existence had me riveted… I’ll remember the vividness of the characters, developed over a long period of time with director Emma Rosa Went...” -Helen Shaw
“…the Wents present a mesmerizing portrait of adolescents trying to survive” -TimeOut NY
“Emotionally immersive” - The Guardian
