Dates & Times

GO DEEPER: BIRTHDAY CANDLES

by Noah Haidle

Compiled by Christy Montour-Larson

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT:  Noah Haidle

Noah Haidle writes plays that explore time, memory, love, and the quiet absurdity of being human — placing ordinary lives inside vast philosophical frames. With humor, curiosity, and deep compassion for his characters, Haidle invites audiences to consider what makes a life meaningful not through grand achievements, but through accumulated moments of connection, ritual, and presence.

In Birthday Candles, these fascinations come into sharp focus as Haidle traces one woman’s life across nearly a century in a single evening of theatre. The result is both intimate and expansive: a kitchen-sink drama that becomes an epic meditation on time, wonder, and what it means to keep showing up across the span of a life.

• “On Aging With Grace” — Concord Theatricals Noah Haidle discusses the origin of Birthday Candles and reflects on writing a once-in-a-lifetime acting challenge and using birthdays and baking as rituals that mark time, memory, and meaning. The conversation highlights the play’s blend of humor, mortality, and wonder.

Click HERE to read.

• “Interview with Playwright Noah Haidle” — Roundabout Theatre Company. In this conversation, Haidle shares how Birthday Candles was inspired by Thornton Wilder and the idea of dropping into key birthdays across a lifetime. He explores theatrical time, memory, and why ordinary moments — repeated over years — become the true measure of a meaningful life.

Click HERE to Read

• “Noah Haidle Examines a Lifetime” — Playbill Haidle reflects on bringing Birthday Candles to Broadway and creating a play that moves beyond realism into theatrical magic. He describes the story as a meditation on how a lifetime becomes a life — shaped not by grand achievements, but by love, attention, and the accumulation of small moments.

Click HERE to read

• “Noah Haidle on the Importance of Live Theatre.” In this short, engaging interview, playwright Noah Haidle reflects on why live theatre matters right now and how Birthday Candlesexplores the vastness of existence through one ordinary human life. He describes the play as an invitation to consider time, presence, and the miracle of being alive together in a shared space. 

Click HERE to watch 

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

To read Christy Montour-Larson’s Director’s Note, click HERE.

TIME, AGING & THE MEANING OF A LIFE

Birthday Candles asks a deceptively simple question: What makes a life meaningful? These readings explore aging, purpose, and how we experience time emotionally and philosophically.

• “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness” — Harvard Gazette
  
  This article examines the 80+ year Harvard Study of Adult Development, which found that close relationships — not wealth or status — are the strongest predictors of happiness and longevity. Its findings echo Birthday Candles’ quiet insistence that connection, not achievement, defines a life.  Click HERE to read
• “The Psychology of Time Perception” — Psychology Today
  Why does time seem to accelerate as we age? This piece explores how novelty, memory, and attention shape our perception of time — offering insight into the emotional experience of watching decades pass onstage in a single evening. Click HERE to read
• “How to Grow Old” — The Atlantic
  This article explores how purpose and happiness evolve across a lifetime, arguing that fulfillment in later years often depends on shifting identity away from achievement toward wisdom and contribution — a journey Ernestine confronts head-on. Click HERE to read

RITUAL, REPETITION & THE SACRED ORDINARY

Each year, Ernestine bakes the same cake. Repetition becomes structure. Ritual becomes meaning.

• “Why Rituals Matter” — The Conversation
  Explores how rituals anchor us during uncertainty, strengthen bonds, and create psychological stability. It illuminates how Ernestine’s birthday ritual becomes both grounding and transformative across decades. Click HERE to read.
• “The Power of Habit” (Excerpt) — The New York Times
  Examines how repeated behaviors shape identity and meaning. The piece offers a lens for understanding how small, repeated actions — like baking a cake — accumulate into a life story. Click HERE to read.

THEATRICAL TIME & IMAGINATION

The play resists realism. Actors age without prosthetics. Decades pass in seconds. Theatre itself becomes the time machine.

• Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner— Encyclopedia Britannica
  Wilder’s one-act play, which spans 90 years at a single dining table, directly inspired Haidle’s structure and offers context for theatrical storytelling that treats time as fluid and poetic. Click HERE to watch.
• “Why Live Theatre Still Matters” — American Theatre Magazine
  Explores how live theatre invites audiences to actively imagine what cannot literally be shown — a crucial element in Birthday Candles, where aging and time rely on shared imagination. Click HERE to read.

THE HISTORY OF BIRTHDAYS

The birthday celebration — complete with cake, candles, and an annual ritual of gathering — is a relatively recent cultural invention. For much of human history, birthdays were not widely observed, and when they were, they often marked royalty or religious figures rather than ordinary individuals.

As modern life became increasingly structured by clocks, calendars, and personal milestones, birthdays evolved into a way of honoring the passage of time and the uniqueness of each life. What began as scattered customs — from Roman cakes to German Kinderfeste — gradually became a deeply personal ritual.

Understanding this history adds another layer to Birthday Candles, where one woman’s yearly act of baking becomes both ordinary and radical: a quiet insistence that a single life is worth marking, year after year.

• “The Strange Origins of American Birthday Celebrations” — The Atlantic
  Explores how birthday rituals evolved and why modern culture places such importance on marking individual aging. Click HERE to read.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: ENGAGING WITH BIRTHDAY CANDLES

  Ernestine asks early in the play: “Have I wasted my life?” How does the play answer that question — if it does?

  The play unfolds across nearly a century inside one kitchen. How did this theatrical choice shape your experience of time?

  Which moments felt most ordinary? Which felt most profound? Did those ever overlap?

  How does repetition — baking the same cake, celebrating birthdays — function in the play? What do rituals mean in your own life?

  The play resists traditional plot and instead accumulates moments. How did that structure affect the way you watched and listened?

  What does the play suggest about how we measure a meaningful life? Achievement? Love? Presence? Something else?

  How did watching the characters age (without realistic aging effects) engage your imagination as an audience member?

  Where did you find humor in the play? How does humor coexist with loss, aging, and mortality here?

  Ernestine is both deeply ordinary and philosophically curious. How do those qualities shape her journey?

  What role does memory play in the world of the play? How do memories — or the loss of them — shape identity?

  What relationships in the play stayed with you most strongly, and why?

  How does Birthday Candles challenge or affirm cultural ideas about success, productivity, and legacy?

  What remains at the end of a life? What do we pass on — intentionally or unintentionally?

  After watching this play, has your thinking shifted at all about time, aging, or what makes a life meaningful?

LIBRARY RESOURCES TO ENHANCE YOUR BIRTHDAY CANDLES EXPERIENCE

Curated by the Denver Public Library

The Denver Public Library recommends these library resources to enhance your theatre experience of Birthday Candles. 

READ  

Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace

Like Birthday Candles, the novel Big Fish explores themes of aging and parent-child relationships, though with a fantastical twist. The story is told through the recollections of outlandish tales that Edward Bloom told his son, William, about his life. As Will attempts to repair his strained relationship with his dying father, he tries to find the truth in his father’s larger-than-life stories while he still has time with him. The story has also been adapted into a film and a Broadway musical.

 

WATCH  

Boyhood, dir. Richard Linklater (2014)

This award-winning film was filmed over 12 years, charting the growth of a family over time and focusing on the parent–child relationship. Like Birthday Candles, the changes of life are highlighted through small, intimate moments showing the rhythms and texture of every day. Prepare for emotional resonance that hits deeper after viewing Birthday Candles.

 

LISTEN  

Trip by Jhené Aiko 

Just as Birthday Candles takes the audience through the different stages of Ernestine, Aiko’s third album, Trip, takes listeners for a ride through the varying experiences of her life. From processing the grief of her brother’s death, through Aiko’s own mental health journey, to the experience of new loves and relationships, Trip will wrap the listener in a psychedelic cocoon of melodies, lyrics, and emotions. The vulnerability and rawness of the lyrics, combined with Aiko’s smooth, warm voice, allow you to drift off and become enveloped by her story, guiding you through the different snapshots, or tracks, of her life.

DOWNLOAD

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

Like Ernestine in Birthday Candles, the story of Oona Out of Order is constructed around Oona’s birthdays at different stages of life. Only Oona is… well, out of order, and never knows which birthday she’ll jump to next when the clock strikes midnight. This novel examines deep questions about the nature of life with warmth and wit. Critics have praised Brittany Pressley’s audiobook narration, but non-listeners can find this title on eBook as well.