Synopsis
Early one September morning, in an isolated farmhouse in the middle of rural Nebraska, Rebecca Pender peeks out her bedroom window and sees a vision of the end of the world. The next day, she and her husband, Lucas, stand transfixed as they witness the collapse of the World Trade Center. Insidiously, the trauma of 9/11 unlocks within Rebecca's psyche a Pandora's box of repressed fears. She loses weight, obsessively sanitizes the house, claims the water is tainted, even prowls gun shops and army surplus stores. She fails to keep appointments with her psychologist, preferring to hide out in movie theatres or drive isolated back roads. Though Lucas does not fully embrace Rebecca's deepening paranoia, he can't envision life without her. He sells his business, helps Rebecca build an underground shelter and stockpiles food supplies and weapons. They sever all relationships with family, clergy and friends. But while Rebecca thrives on the energy of their collaboration, Lucas begins to decline—a voracious cancer has gripped his life. At last, Lucas takes his place in their front yard, flashlight in one hand, shotgun in the other, scanning the skies in search of the Armageddon that must surely be coming. In the Middle of Nowhere examines how fear poisons the soul like a virus, ravaging all who come in contact with it.
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Details
-
Status
In stock
- Type of Show Full-length Play
- Product Code IA3000
- Cast Size 2
- Min. Royalty Rate $110/perf
- Cost $11.95
- Approx. Run Time 90 min
Categories
- ISBN(13) 9781583427033
Customer Reviews
- "This play knocked the audience out. It was very powerful. The best description was posted on FB by a local playwright, Alex Lasareff-Mironoff: I don’t go to the theater for inspiration or encouragement about the human condition. I go to catch the occasional glimmer of truth – about life, about us, about the webs we both weave and struggle against. A play that falsifies truth in order to make us “feel good” succeeds only in setting off my bullshit detectors. Kent Brown’s “In the Middle of Nowhere,” as performed by the Smokehouse Players, delivered truth and did so with almost unbearable intensity. It provided a truly illuminating and luminous theatrical experience. It revealed how readily free-floating anxiety, when fixed on a concrete threat -- no matter how remote or improbable -- blossoms into full blown paranoia, anger and hatred, initiating a spiral of destruction that ultimately pulls others into its vortex. It spoke to the predicament we find ourselves in today as a nation. If you missed it, you missed gaining insights into what festers at the root of America’s current dysfunction, of what we’re up against when our leaders stoke and exploit our fears, instead of helping us see that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”"
- Review by Terry Vaughan, Smokehouse Players, Fayetteville, Ark.
Hints, Tips, and Tricks
- "I suggest folks be brave and do this as a staged bare-bones production vs. a staged reading. The power is in completely committed performances. It is a challenge for the actors. My husband, Tim Gilster, and I played Rebecca and Lucas and it was a bear! Huge emotional commitment and lots of difficult lines to remember and we have been performing for over 40 years. That said it was so rewarding. We kept it simple - a table, two chairs, a few empty boxes, two guns, a pot, and a blanket. We had a live musician play and it opened the audience up to the world of imagination. Told them in the curtain speech that they would need to dive in and fill in the blanks. They loved it!! "
- Tip by Terry Vaughan, Smokehouse Players, Fayetteville, Ark.
Media Reviews
“Kent R. Brown’s In the Middle of Nowhere could hardly be more timely. This riveting play … explores how fear and paranoia can poison the minds of seemingly normal, sensible people.” —Greenville News
“Nowhere speaks to an undeniable strain in contemporary American politics: an anxiety that goes far beyond healthy worries about globalization and terrorism to embrace hatred, fierce distrust and rabid nationalism.” —Greenville News
“Brown has constructed a compelling first-person duologue that demonstrates the destructive lengths people will go out of unbridled fear and paranoia. It is a serious drama but there are kernels of wry humor too.” —Carolina Curtain Call
“Brown is a clever dramatic manipulator. He has a devilish act-one zinger just before the intermission and several narrative twists later on that lead to a satisfying payoff.” —Carolina Curtain Call
Gallery
Smokehouse Players, Fayetteville, AR
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