Backstage at a 1990s tribute concert, the past is waiting for an encore.

In Manoli Kouremetis’ The Green Room, two veteran musicians find themselves reunited in the shabby backstage room where everything once seemed possible. Don Davis, a country-folk-rock performer with a failing body and a restless memory, has returned to the former Snacktime Theater for Grant Sutton’s 50th Anniversary concert. But Don is not really there for Grant. He is there for Betty Thrasher: singer, songwriter, former collaborator, and the one person who still knows exactly where the bodies, and the songs, are buried.

As the concert plays out on a television just offstage, Don and Betty confront the years between them: the music they made, the chances they missed, the wounds they left unattended, and the complicated legacy of a life spent chasing applause. What begins as a backstage reunion becomes a funny, bruising, and deeply human reckoning with aging, ambition, friendship, illness, race, regret, and the strange intimacy of making art with someone who knows your worst notes and your best ones.

Presented as part of ROŪGE’s Arts All Over Series, The Green Room offers audiences a first look at a new work in process: a play about memory, music, and the unfinished conversations that wait for us in the rooms where we became ourselves.