There are worlds within all of us.  The ability to imagine is perhaps the most brilliant skill of the human brain. It requires input from multiple parts of the brain—memories are formed and stored in the hippocampus, the temporal lobe processes auditory and visual information needed to create those memories and the prefrontal cortex combines those past memories with executive functions such as reasoning and future planning to create new, fictitious scenarios. The ability to imagine is both one of the most liberating and limiting aspects of the human condition. For while the brain’s capacity to create has led to wondrous inventions, it can also create barriers to engaging with the real world. For some, the world created within their mind is safer than the real world, the anxieties, fears and trauma associated with outside life causing them to retract to a life between their ears.

Primary Trust is a play about the worlds that we create in our minds, the possibilities that await just outside of one’s imagination and the true power of human connection. This January, Eboni Booth’s tender play—which premiered off-Broadway in 2023 and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama—will come to Sarasota for the first time at Asolo Repertory Theatre. Set in the 1990s, Primary Trust  follows Kenneth, a 38-year-old Black man who lives in quiet isolation in the small town of Cranberry, New York. 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.” Primary Trust is a journey through Kenneth’s memory. The story alternates between Kenneth addressing the audience directly and his recollections of the last six months of his life—a life that, until he’s let go from working at the bookstore, is one largely devoid of real human connection. It’s not that Kenneth doesn’t have a friend. He has a best friend, in fact, Bert, who joins him every night for drinks at Wally’s. It is soon revealed, however, that Bert is real only to Kenneth. The world, for reasons disclosed later in the story, is safer for Keneth with Bert in it. Through the use of direct address, the audience becomes complicit in the story—aware of Kenneth’s secret, inner world before the rest of the characters in Primary Trust are. “I love direct address, because it’s something that is unique to the theater. The immediacy of time and space and the actor breaking through the fourth wall is one of our most powerful devices,” says Rothstein. “The audience becomes a scene partner—that’s kind of the number one rule in Shakespeare’s soliloquy, is that the character has to know what they need from the audience.”

To entrench the play in a sense of isolationism, director Chari Arespacochaga worked with the scenic designer to create a set that was more gestural, than literal in nature. Cranberry is a quaint small town that is slipping away into generalized suburbia, its idiosyncrasies and character soon to be paved over and replaced with condominiums, parking lots and chain stores. Arespacochaga and her team drew inspiration from the work of American artist James Turrell, playing with light and space to create scenes that appeared to be set almost within a “snow globe.” “We were looking to capture not just moments of isolation, but moments of isolation within urban settings,” says Arespacochaga. “We also wanted the play to sort of ebb and flow—it feels linear, but the story is told through the non-linear perspective of Kenneth’s memories. There’s a beautiful backdrop that changes with the lighting and then in the foreground specific settings like the bank, the office and the bookstore appear.”

Adding to the lyrical, poetic nature of Primary Trust is the music. Asolo Rep’s production will feature an original score from composer Peter Vitale—who will also play the role of  Musician—driving the play from scene to scene, engaging the audience further into the emotional journey of the characters. “I read the script and it brought me a feeling akin to when I’m reading poetry and I think music is our bridge into that experience,” says Arespacochaga. “Music will drive us forward by not only helping us define the different settings, but the real moments of connection that Kenneth starts building and building upon.”

Those moments of connection begin when Kenneth meets Corrina, a waitress at Wally’s, and Kenneth’s first real friend. At Corrina’s behest, Kenneth applies for a job as a teller at the Primary Trust bank, a role that thrusts him more and more into the real world. Slowly, and at times begrudgingly, Kenneth starts to creep away from the confines of his mind. It’s a progression felt most acutely in Kenneth’s relationship with Bert. In order for Kenneth to fully accept his place in the real world, he must sacrifice the relationship he holds most closely to his heart. “Bert always provides what Kenneth needs in the moment. He’s Kenneth’s life vest, but he’s also Kenneth’s barrier to real connection, because the more Bert is around, the less Kenneth will need other people,” says Arespacochaga. “Our cast is fantastic and I’m excited to see how they’re going to figure out contrasts between the two characters and just how fleshed out Bert is as a person, which in turn shows the history of how and why Kenneth created him.”

Portraying Kenneth is Anthony Cason, an actor with the ability to strike the delicate balance of awkwardness and inherent charm Kenneth has within. For although Kenneth may struggle socially within the world of the play, the actor must have a certain level of charisma to lead the audience through the story. “Kenneth taps into a part of all of us that’s trying. 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,” says Arespacochaga. “The charisma is in his vulnerability, his willingness to change and his struggle in doing so.”

On the outside, Kenneth’s life appears to be small. He works an ordinary job in a nondescript suburb of Rochester, New York, with no family of his own, leaving no discernable impact on the world around him. A closer look, however, reveals that Kenneth’s life is in fact, quite large. It’s a life full of joy and sorrow, rife with doubt and fear, but also one of courage and hope. Kenneth’s story is a reminder that life is as big as one makes it, that sometimes, all it takes to enter a new world is someone to hold open the door—and the courage to step through it.