Talk about writing on deadline: The acclaimed playwright Richard Nelson is crafting a drama that is set tonight and opens tonight, pegged to this crazy election.

The play, “Women of a Certain Age,” is the last of a trilogy of intimate works following a fictional family, the Gabriels of Rhinebeck, N.Y., throughout the year. Each opened on the night it was set, meaning that Mr. Nelson was adding lines to reflect news events, the weather and neighborhood observations until just before the performances.



The trilogy, performed Off Broadway at the Public Theater, follows a quartet of plays, also written by Mr. Nelson and staged by the Public, that chronicle the lives of a neighboring family, the Apples, for several years, starting on the night of the 2010 midterm election. Each of the seven stories is highly naturalistic and unfolds in real time. The Gabriel plays are all set in a kitchen in which family members talk while preparing a meal; once the meal is ready, the shows end.

“I would hear conversations about the country — and how people’s lives related to the country — in my living room with friends, and overhear them in restaurants or on the train, but not on the news or on television or from comedians,” Mr. Nelson said. “The ambiguous, questioning quality wasn’t being articulated. So I thought theater was an opportunity to do that.”