John Cariani is a Tony-nominated actor and playwright from Maine, now based in New York. With Professor Alex Draper currently directing his play, “Almost, Maine,” for the theatre department, the school invited Cariani to campus for a series of workshops with students and community members. The beloved classic has been produced worldwide over 8,000 times in 20 years, according to a recent New York Times profile. While on campus, he also met with the play’s cast, crew and the Advanced Playwriting class.
Visiting Assistant Professor Callie Kimball, who teaches playwriting, noted that Cariani is something of a “folk hero” to many theatre students for his deep commitment to building community. Having previously worked with him at Bates College and shared Portland Stage as an artistic home, Kimball saw inviting him to Middlebury as a natural fit.
“We were lucky to host him,” she said. “He’s coming back to see the show and participate in a talkback at the end of the month."
Despite the titles and accolades Cariani has earned, the first thing one notices upon meeting him is his roundish-square glasses, his endearing, almost boyish smile and an innocent wonder in his eyes. It is hard to immediately connect the down-to-earth person standing before you with the highest honors of American theatre. Yet, when he speaks in class or guides students through an improv prompt, those same eyes radiate a quiet, undeniable strength.
He is a man of charming contradictions. Despite claiming he “hates writing,” he religiously visits his local library or walks through the woods without headphones just to observe the world. Driven purely by his deep love for theatre and the joy of collective creation, he overcomes writing blocks with a simple rule: for two minutes a day, write fleeting, quirky ideas on slips of paper and tuck them into a shoebox to pull out whenever inspiration calls.
During his playwriting workshop, Cariani kicked things off with a storytelling game. A group of students lined up before the whiteboard, taking turns to build a coherent story by contributing one word, one punctuation mark or a combination of both. The room burst into laughter as the plot completely veered off the rails. Amid the chaotic unpredictability, Cariani shared a key piece of his creative philosophy: he always envisions the final destination of his story first — a beautiful, settled image — and then firmly guides the narrative toward that ending.
Next, he paired students up on stage for a ten-line dialogue exercise governed by strict constraints, such as decreasing line lengths from ten words down to one. Cariani stepped onto the stage himself to demonstrate, engaging in light physical conflict with a student or repeating the line “You are wearing green shoes” in varying tones to observe how actors intuitively react under heightened tension.
He then challenged the class with a creative writing exercise.From a pool of prompts crowdsourced by everyone in the room, a cluster of seemingly unrelated words emerged: carpenter, mosquito, aquarium, cold shoulders, forehead kisses, dahlia and so many more. Just as everyone was wondering how on earth to connect this eclectic mix, Cariani helped the class weave these disparate elements into their own unique, imaginative stories.
Currently, Cariani is working on a new play centered on a lesbian couple. The idea came from one of his friends who wished for a beautiful story about lesbian relationships. As he put it with a grin: "I can deal with the gay part; they just have to help me with the women part."
When asked what kind of works he gravitates toward, Cariani spoke warmly of pieces that are compassionate, full of vitality and capable of instilling hope — a spirit that sits at the very heart of “Almost, Maine.” Set on a cold, clear, snow-dusted Friday evening at precisely 8:50 PM, as the Northern Lights shimmer across the sky, the play captures a fleeting moment where love, loss, heartbreak, and healing intertwine, as if the aurora itself has ushered a touch of supernatural magic into the cold night air.
Having spent his whole career writing about love, Cariani admitted his understanding of it has evolved, especially after entering his own marriage. Although love is complex and multi-layered, he maintains an enduring belief in it. In sharing his heart through “Almost, Maine,” Cariani radiates a rare, luminous energy and a childlike wonder that touches everything he creates. For the audience, merely stepping into his theatrical world plants a seed of something radiant and hopeful within — an invitation to live toward beauty.
