Set in 1944, against the backdrop of World War II and the waning days of Hollywood’s glamour era, Bluebonnet Court is a play about sex, civil rights and finding family in the most unusual places. It is the story of people who struggle – sometimes fearlessly, sometimes fearfully – with their sexuality, their relationships to race and ethnicity, and the vast cultural differences created by desire, geography, class and color.

In this multi-racial romantic dramedy, wisecracking Hearst Sob Sister Helen Burke (nee Berkowitz) is winding her way from Manhattan to Hollywood, into a coveted spot as an MGM contract writer and the waiting arms of her closeted lover, movie star Laura Stanton. When Helen is waylaid on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, it’s more than her car that gets an overhaul. Her arrival disrupts the delicate balance of relationships between the denizens of her temporary home – the Bluebonnet Court motor hotel – and calls the question: Would we have the courage to reveal our true selves if the stakes were nothing less than life or death?

Bluebonnet Court explores a period in American history in the decade before the emergence of the civil rights and homophile movements. The play examines certain aspects of American culture that remain very much alive, deeply troubling and difficult to confront. Racial intolerance, anti-Semitism, homophobia and a general fear of the other continue to pervade our country, especially during wartime. We need look no further than today’s headlines to apprehend the vital role the arts play in pressing us to keep confronting this unattractive underbelly of our national consciousness. Because the play is set in the 1940s, audiences can examine these challenging issues at arm’s length while getting swept up in a story of everyday people battling within and without to be themselves.

Bluebonnet Court premiered in 2006, at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles and was winner in 2007 of the GLAAD Award for Outstanding Los Angeles Theatre and two NAACP Theatre Awards for Theatrical Excellence. The production garnered three nominations each from the Los Angeles Stage Alliance and the LA Weekly. In 2008, Bluebonnet Court was produced by San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre, in a co-production with Moxie Theatre, and was named one of the season’s Top Ten productions by the San Diego Union Tribune.

In its two sold-out productions, the play has attracted diverse audiences of all ages, races and backgrounds who have connected with the characters. A deceptively simple read at first blush, Bluebonnet Court is a layered work, worth exploring at length.