Punchline’s #Unhappy Hour Is Intriguing Field Trip Into World Of South Florida Millennials

Because they write what they know, the five playwrights of Punchline Theatre Company’s #Unhappy Hour provide a peek into the evolving saga of Millennials in America in the 21st Century – South Florida Division.

Over the past decade as hyphenated actors-directors-playwrights, the close knit cadre of Mark Della Ventura, David Michael Sirois, Gabe Hammad, Meera Paul and Gladys Ramirez have delivered either a familiar mirror of your life or an eavesdropping Margaret Mead expedition for older generations, in works such as Brothers Beckett.

#Unhappy Hour is an unusual imaginative slice-of-life that is engaging despite that some facets work better than others. But it reveals a unique zeitgeist made up of familiar building blocks like the rocky road to romance, the wide spectrum of human behavior, and the presence of extra-terrestrials running our government.

The premise originally was for the authors to write seven separate playlets using the same characters in the same milieu, a South Florida sports bar that attracts regulars and strangers for its late night cut-rate “Unhappy Hour.” But during workshops sessions, directors Della Ventura and Hammad smoothly massaged together the scripts so that they didn’t feel like disconnected episodes. That resulted in the unified anthology feel of Grand Hotel or Hot L Baltimore or The Time of Your Life.