Asolo Rep's production of Primary Trust. Provided photo.

Next week, Asolo Repertory Theatre’s production of Primary Trust will come to an end. Eboni Booth’s play, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2023 and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is a “deceptively simple," tender story about loneliness and the power of human connection. Set in suburban upstate New York in the 1990s, Primary Trust follows Kenneth, a 38-year-old Black man who lives an isolated existence as a book store worker in a small town.

It’s an existence Kenneth is content with—he spends his days working at the local bookstore and nights sipping mai tais at the local tiki bar—but when he is laid off from the bookstore and begins working at the Primary Trust bank, Kenneth is forced to confront a world he’s long avoided.

“It’s really a portrait of a 38-year-old man confronting loneliness and the coping mechanisms that he’s employed to deal with it,” says Peter Rothstein, the producing artistic director at Asolo Rep. “When Kenneth is provided an opportunity, when someone opens a door for you, not only does that door open, but the entire world opens up. Kenneth is able to see the entire world anew because of human connection.”

Kenneth, for much of his life, has lived in a bubble. His best friend Bert, for instance, is only real to him. Primary Trust tracks Kenneth’s gradual progression from the confines of his mind into the real world, turning what appears to be a mundane story about a bank clerk into a moving depiction of a man’s journey out of isolation. “Kenneth taps into a part of all of us that’s trying,” says director Chari Arespacochaga.” The parts of ourselves that have the hardest time believing that better things are coming, except we catch him at a point in the show where he has no choice but to change.”

Primary Trust, January 7-February 11, Asolo Repertory Theatre, 5555 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota.

Asolo Rep's production of Primary Trust. Provided photo.

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