Human Things

Human Things is a new play by Joshua Owen, a drama for four actors set on an atoll in the South Pacific. It is Owen's first play and his Off-Broadway debut as a writer. Two couples sit at the center of it: a retired pair who end up on the island by accident, and a married scientist and engineer who live at a remote research outpost.

The subjects are big ones: marriage, climate change, mortality and the ways people look after each other when the world feels out of control. The script also leaves room for comedy, so the evening is not all gloom.

Rowan Productions presents the play, with Mix and Match Productions as executive producer and general manager. That company co-produced the Broadway musical Maybe Happy Ending, which won the 2025 Tony Award for Best Musical. Human Things is a commercial Off-Broadway production rather than part of a nonprofit company's season, and it is a world premiere in a limited engagement.

The play begins with a wreck. Bo and Darce, an older married couple, are partway through a long sailing voyage when their boat runs onto a coral reef near the atoll. Darce is hurt, and Bo goes looking for help. He finds the outpost where Margaret and Greg live and work.

Margaret is a scientist studying a shrinking population of migratory birds. Greg, her husband, is an engineer who mostly assists with her research and is unsure what his own job on the island really is. Their marriage is already in trouble before the strangers appear.

Almost at once, a typhoon heads for the island, a Category 5 storm. The four of them have to face it together, and the rest of the play grows out of that. The second act takes place after the storm has passed.

Owen began writing the play about six years before the 2026 premiere. It runs in two acts with one intermission, and the cast of four keeps the focus tight: two couples, one small piece of land, very little room to hide.

Climate anxiety is one root of the script, in the sense of going about an ordinary life while paying attention to bad news for the planet. Another comes from an interview with Bill Irwin, who recalled how Mike Nichols saw Waiting for Godot and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as resting on the same skeleton. In both, a couple in trouble is joined by newcomers who shake things loose and then depart. That setup, a shaky pair visited by outsiders, is also at the heart of Human Things.

As of October 2026, Rebeca Robles plays Margaret. She is also one of the play's producers and is married to Owen, and this is the first time she has acted in a play he wrote. The two spent part of the pandemic isolated together in New Haven while she studied at the Yale School of Drama. Robles says traces of that time reached the play, although it is not autobiographical.

The audience sits on two sides of the playing area. Bers's set shows Greg and Margaret's living and working quarters, with a few pieces of furniture and radio equipment. During the intermission the set is changed to show the island after the storm, and the audience leaves the seating area while that happens.

The production uses no body microphones or amplification of any kind in the West End Theatre. Owen and McGregor built the storm around the theater's own site-specific design and kept the budget modest.

At a reading in 2025 the play was called Gods of Mercy. The cast and creative team for the New York premiere were announced in August 2026.

The world premiere began previews on September 12, 2026, and officially opened on September 25, 2026. It was first announced as a five-week engagement, and the run was later extended by two weeks.