"Leah Hager Cohen entered the world of community theater, where she was fascinated by the magical pageantry and complex camaraderie she found among its small-town adult participants. Looking back on that experience, she writes that it was the first time she had "seen the stuff of dreams come seriously to life."".

"Twenty years later, Cohen found her way to a community theater near Boston, Massachusetts, one of the many thousands like it in America, and set out to chronicle what would be an extraordinary year. Arlington Friends of the Drama had just celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary, was embroiled in disputes over structural changes proposed to help it adapt to changing times, and was about to hold auditions for its most controversial production to date, M. Butterfly.".

"As members of the theater immerse themselves in the production, we witness Celia, the brilliant, hard-driving director, and her struggles with the stars of the play - Patrick, a shy newcomer to the group who plays Song, and Jimmy, an old hand who finds the part of Gallimard the most difficult of his acting career. Backstage, we watch as the sets are designed, the costumes are created, and the lighting is orchestrated.

And as opening night looms, we wonder whether Patrick and Jimmy will finally achieve the rapport to make their onstage relationship believable, if the blood effect in the final scene will ever work, if the choreography will really coalesce into smooth movement on the stage, and, most of all, if their daring selection of this play will mean that the cast will be performing it to an empty house."--BOOK JACKET.