KEIKO GREEN'S YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE END OF THE WORLD! Begins At Oregon Shakespeare Festival This Month
Directed by Zi Alikhan, the production begins performances April 16 in the Thomas Theatre.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) continues its 2026 season with the opening of You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!, a raucous, heartfelt comedy by playwright Keiko Green. Directed by Zi Alikhan, the production begins performances April 16 in the Thomas Theatre.
You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! follows Greg, a man who has tried his best to live responsibly: he recycles, eats healthy foods, and loves his family. When he is confronted with a terminal diagnosis, his personal crisis collides with his growing obsession over climate change and the fate of the planet. As his wife and adult child grapple with their own grief, dinner table conversations escalate into urgent—and hilarious—debates about mortality, meaning, and melting ice caps.
With biting humor and surprising tenderness, Green's play explores how we cope when the unthinkable becomes unavoidable, whether that is the end of a life, a relationship, or the world as we know it. Blending absurdity with emotional precision, the play invites audiences to laugh at the chaos of being human while confronting questions about legacy, responsibility, and love.
“This play feels urgently contemporary,” said OSF Artistic Director Tim Bond. “Keiko Green has written a comedy that meets this moment with honesty and heart. At a time when many of us are carrying both personal anxieties and global fears, this story reminds us that theatre can help us to witness and contend with uncertainty together. I am excited for our audiences to experience a work that is as funny as it is profound, and that asks how we care for one another when the stakes feel impossibly high.”
Director Zi Alikhan brings dynamic theatricality to Green's singular voice, creating a production that moves fluidly between intimate family moments and expansive anxieties. The result is a contemporary comedy that feels both timely and resonant, a reminder that even in the face of endings, our connections endure.
Tickets are on sale now. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.osfashland.org.
Also playing this season:
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Come From Away
- A Raisin in the Sun
- Yellow Face in the Angus Bowmer Theatre;
- August Wilson's King Hedley II
- Smote This, A Comedy About God... and Other Serious $H*T in the intimate Thomas Theatre;
- The Taming of the Shrew
- Henry IV, Part One
- Emma in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre.
ABOUT THE OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) was founded in 1935 in Ashland, OR, and has grown from a three-day festival of two plays to a nationally renowned theatre arts organization that presents a rotating repertory season of plays and musicals, including illuminating interpretations of Shakespeare, other enduring classics, and new works. OSF productions have been presented on Broadway, internationally, and at regional, community, and high school theatres across the country. OSF received the 1983 Special Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and is one of the largest nonprofit theatres in the nation with three stages, including the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre. Learn more at osfashland.org.
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