LATEST NEWS: BARON OF BROWN STREET enjoyed a strong 6-night world premiere run at Rubber City Theatre in Akron in September, 2023. Earlier the year, The Kennedy Center awarded Eric Mansfield with the Jean Kennedy Smith National Playwriting Award - second place - for this dramatic play inspired by true events.

MORE NEWS: This play won FIRST PLACE at the annual new play competition with Market House Theatre in Paducah, KY. A summer-fall production announcement is forthcoming.

Also, this play's development includes a March reading and feedback session with the talented artists of Elephant Room Productions in Philadelphia.

Logline: A homeless man living under an Akron, Ohio bridge struggles with tough life choices as a parade of strangers invade his simple life following a news story of how he forgave the street punks who set him on fire and laughed while he burned. (inspired by true events)

Synopsis: Lenny King, a homeless man living alone in a tent under Akron’s Brown Street bridge, becomes an overnight celebrity after a newspaper story details Lenny’s kind heart in forgiving three teens who set him on fire and laughed at his pain. Enduring the physical and emotional scars of a man abused by life and his own bad decisions, Lenny must now fend off strangers looking to exploit him for their own publicity, including a quick-buck attorney, nosy photographer, judgemental local church members, pushy developers and others. Still, the news article also brings others from Lenny's past looking to help him and to reconnect.

With each new visitor to what had been his quiet oasis, Lenny fights to retain what’s left of his privacy and dignity while providing life lessons to those who make ignorant assumptions about the homeless.

Light-hearted, gritty, and yet dramatically poignant, The Baron of Brown Street turns the tables on those quick to pass judgment based on where someone chooses to lay their head while providing deep insight into the heart of a man torn between continuing his simple life of homeless depression or choosing one last chance at redemption.

NOTE: The first 20 pages is available for download here. Contact the playwright if interested in reviewing the entire play or reviewing the world premiere from Rubber City Theatre.