Starter Pistol

Deer season. Somewhere in the dying small-town Midwest of our New America, a loose reimagining of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis: unsung mother, wife and breadwinner Karen James’ family has enough venison chili to survive the approaching winter. But when a stranger comes to dinner, can they survive the secrets buried in their past, the reckoning to come, and make it to the big MegaBall drawing this particularly eventful Friday night?
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Starter Pistol

Recommended by

  • Nick Malakhow:
    6 Jan. 2020
    A taut, well-structured, ready-to-produce play that organically unfolds in real time. The silences and transitions never feel contrived, and Gotch uses dialogue exquisitely as both a vehicle for characterization and as a driving force for his deliberately paced plot. Revelations and surprises come at perfectly-timed intervals, and each character is fully rendered and impressively captured. The end is appropriately chilling and a moment where you look back at the rest of the play and say "of course it was all leading up to this." A robust exploration of guns and toxic masculinity that never feels obvious or preachy.
  • Ryan Hartley:
    4 Jan. 2020
    This play terrified me. Gotch has somehow wrangled all of toxicity of patriarchy, racism, and generational denial into a psycho thriller about American gun culture...and it never once feels bloated. In fact, it feels deeply authentic. I’ve met the people in this play. I grew up around some of them. Gotch has given us startling insight into the broken machinery of American society.
  • Elizabeth A. M. Keel:
    19 Oct. 2019
    I flew through this play. It captures the real essence of the bizarre culture/religion of hunting, and its intertwined state with masculinity and the desire to feed the family. The language is realistic but sneakily beautiful: it’s spoken by real people, who have no idea they're letting such elegance burst out of them. Thank you for sharing it!

Development History

  • Reading
    ,
    Ashland New Plays Festival
    ,
    2019
  • Workshop
    ,
    The REP, University of Delaware
    ,
    2019
  • Workshop
    ,
    New Works Initiative, Westport Country Playhouse, dir. Mark Lamos
    ,
    2019

Production History

  • Professional
    ,
    The REP, dir. Mark Lamos
    ,
    2020

Awards

Semi-Finalist
,
Princess Grace Foundation Playwriting Award
,
,
2021
Semi-Finalist
,
O'Neill National Playwrights Conference
,
2019