A young man and woman sit on stools on a stage, while an older man sits at a table behind them between two wooden ladders.

About the Festival

The Goodman, together with The Wilder Estate, is launching a new holiday tradition—The Long Christmas Dinner Festival—and everyone is invited.

Stretching from Alaska to Florida, from California to Maine, and many places in between, the festival will feature more than 30 theaters, schools, and bookstores in 20 states who will share Wilder’s holiday masterpiece, the one-act play The Long Christmas Dinner, with their communities. In just 40 minutes of stage time, the play shows 90 years of a family’s history flying by. This innovative, moving, funny, profound drama helps us understand time, tradition, and our own families more clearly.

The Goodman joins a lineup containing some of the country’s most acclaimed theaters, all of whom have a recent history with Wilder’s plays (The Public Theater, Seattle Rep, Miami New Drama, Pasadena Playhouse, Rude Mechs) as well as high schools, independent bookstores, and colleges (including Vassar and Yale, where students collaborated to stage the play’s world premiere in 1931).

ARTISTS

A man with a mustache, wearing a fedora and a heavy coat, standing on the deck of a ship.

Thornton Wilder

Playwright

Anthony Rapp

A middle-aged man with glasses and shaggy hair, wearing a dark button-down shirt, holds an electric guitar.

Jeff Tweedy