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"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."
- Robert Burns, To a Mouse

When I was in high school I was assigned to read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. As with most books I had been assigned in school, it seemed this would be yet another book about people I had no connection with in a time that looked nothing like my own. But what that 16-year-old girl from Pullman found as each page of the story was turned, was that this was a story of people. True people that I could connect with and feel with. It was this connection to a time and place I never expected to connect to that resulted in the strongest emotional reaction to a piece of literature I had ever had. When I finished the last page of the book, tears streaming down my face, I physically threw it across the room in my emotion. I had never experienced a reaction to the written word like that before and it was at that moment that I knew this would always be one of my favorite books. 

In recent years, Steinbeck's masterpiece has become even more important to me. The quote to which this classic story owes its title has seemed to ring in my ears throughout the last three years. Since February 2020, it seems that all the plans I so carefully made went more than awry with each new wave of COVID. The tragedy of the worldwide pandemic and the aftermath it has caused allowed me to connect with the tragedy of Lennie and George in ways I never have before. Their love for each other and desire to just live a quiet peaceful life in a world where nothing seems to be going right for anyone. It seemed the plans of the whole world were going awry. And that seems to ring just as true today as it did in 1937 when the story was written. 

It has been my absolute pleasure to bring this story to life for you the audience. I hope you feel the connection with these characters that I had when I was 16. And I hope your emotional reaction also leaves you agreeing with me that John Steinbeck is one of the greatest storytellers of all time and his Of Mice and Men will forever be relevant in a world full of people that just want a place of their own... and maybe a few rabbits to tend. 

"I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why." - John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Kristin Lincoln - Director