GREENE – Closing the season, from Oct. 1-24, Chenango River Theatre will mount the classic beauty from the heart of American literature, “Of Mice and Men.” Co-produced by IBM and Naima & Ara Kradjian and written by John Steinbeck, one of America’s most celebrated authors, the play won the 1938 NY Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Until you’ve seen it on stage, you haven’t really experienced it.  

It’s the American dream - owning some land, some place to call your own, to be your own boss. Steinbeck tells a powerful story set during the Great Depression that explores the ultimate bond of friendship. It’s a tale of two drifters - men whose dreams are always just beyond the horizon - a story that talks about the real hopes and dreams of working class America, then and now. 

Steinbeck, more perhaps than any other American playwright, makes a hero of the common man and speaks their language with a simple, unmatched eloquence. Perhaps part of why this play still has such an impact is that the author lived the story. 

In an interview with the NY Times, Steinbeck said, “I was a bindlestiff myself for quite a spell. I worked in the same country that the story is laid in. The characters are composites to a certain extent. Lennie was a real person. He's in an insane asylum in California right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn't kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times I saw him do it. We couldn't stop him until it was too late.”