PASADENA, Calif. — The end of the world is coming — again and again — and the Antrobus family has to figure out how to weather it all.

For Trisha Miller, who plays Mrs. Antrobus in "The Skin of Our Teeth," it doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch.

“This is something that we all can understand and we all can feel really viscerally just because it was, you know, a few years ago,” she said.

Miller is referring to the global pandemic, but she could actually be talking about any number of things humanity is trying to navigate on any given day. And while the play centers around one family, Frederick Stewart, who plays the patriarch, said they represent any family.

“We're just trying to keep it together, while outside the front door, there are all these catastrophes happening,” he said.

"The Skin of Our Teeth," written by Thornton Wilder, is an absurd play that sees the family trying to survive the ice age, the great flood and a massive war. The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, which is also very comedic, first opened in 1942 — another time of great upheaval.

“Time is a strange thing because, of course, we think of ourselves as being so vastly different to times past.” Stewart said. “But I don't think we are, really. I think we are fundamentally the same. We're just dealing with different problems.”

Or in a way the same problems, as Geoff Elliott sees it.

“It's eerie how timely it is,” he said of Wilder’s play. “Global warming, wars, a frantic, let's face it, rather insane political cycle is happening in the middle of all of this. It's as if he wrote it yesterday.”

Elliott is co-directing the shows with his wife Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, and the pair knows a thing or two about survival. They run A Noise Within which, like all theaters, had to find ways to survive a prolonged shutdown and slow recovery. Perhaps that’s why the theme of this season is "True Grit," something they and their company members displayed. "The Skin of Our Teeth" fits the theme perfectly.

“It usually works best in times of crisis” Rodriguez-Elliott said. “And I think we’re there.”

“And I think this is what Thornton Wilder was saying,” Elliott added. “We have extraordinary resilience and we can get through just about anything… if we work together.”

It's an important message following a period of isolation and during a time of sharp political divide. And it’s something Wilder does well, Elliott says, drilling down into the challenges and the joys of being human.

“You can't help but come out of… "The Skin of Our Teeth" and feel at least a little hope,” he said. “Even if you're the numbest person on the planet, you can't help but leave the theater thinking, geez, maybe it's not that bad.”

Miller agreed, adding, “I feel like people will leave the theater feeling pretty good about life and what we are capable of.”