Breaking Up

Steve and Monica are breaking up… again. It’s not the first time and it definitely won’t be the last. BREAKING UP follows the lives of two lovers who share an attraction so passionate that it’s out of control. Their emotional co-dependence is so strong, neither one seems able to walk away, even though that would probably be the best for both.

It seems like there is no middle ground in photographer Steve and schoolteacher Monica’s relationship. They are either wildly happy together or at each other’s throat. Over the course of several years they try ending it over and over again, but they just don’t seem any happier apart than they were together; each can feel the other’s palpable absence and even though they bring out the worst in each other, invariably they are drawn back together. Time and time again they reconcile and everything is great, briefly, until some casual remark or slip of the tongue sets one of them against the other to disastrous results.

Eventually (and suddenly) Steve proposes. Monica accepts and the two euphorically begin to research what makes a marriage succeed. She moves in with him and it seems like they have really turned the corner until he gets cold feet and his anger gets the better of him. He storms off, but will he return? More importantly… should he?

Starring Academy Award® winning actor Russell Crowe and Academy Award® nominated actress Salma Hayek, and based on the two-person play of the same name, BREAKING UP is a relentless, in-your-face story that forces the audience to become a part of Steve and Monica’s ongoing, dysfunctional love affair. With only two characters, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (and screenwriter) Michael Cristofer takes a gritty, unforgiving look at relationships and the characters that, for better or worse, make them universally familiar.