Eric Eberwein

Lee just signed up for the Marines. His mother Jody is aghast. His boyfriend Patrick approves. His old girlfriend Courtney fears the worst. The experience changes him and alters their relationships. When it culminates in deployment and leads to combat, Lee decides he wants out. He comes home on leave, at odds with the Marine Corps reservist he fell in love with and ill at ease in the world. He enlists Courtney in an elaborate plan – a scheme to disappear mysteriously, seize media attention, and emerge later to expose the atrocities he says he has witnessed. Lee has had it with the war, with Patrick, and the world, and he wants to vanish – but his escape may make casualties of those he loves.

19-year-old Adam yearns to be important – but as a “sandwich specialist” working for minimum wage, he knows he isn’t. Stuck living with his loopy, medicated mom in California’s hot, smoggy Inland Empire, he craves a change. He’d like to be a hero; he’d like to make a difference.

Adam has always looked up to cops and paramedics. After all, they respond to emergencies, and he grew up in one. If he could take charge in those kinds of situations, he would feel in charge of his life. These are the motivations that lead young people to public service, and the motivations that create a Kyle Rittenhouse.

In his co-worker Sara, Adam meets a kindred spirit – a kid who had to become the “family hero” to rescue the incompetent, dysfunctional adults around her. When Adam gleans that Sara’s disabled uncle was once a cop, sparks of attraction lead to romance and encourage him to act out some suppressed fantasies.

The media has taught Adam that celebrity and significance are both routine and deserved, and that shortcuts to each are readily available. Emboldened, he puts his fantasies of being a first responder into action. As the child of an addict, Adam learned to lie early in life – and he’s gotten good at it. The question is … when will his fraud be exposed? What results for Adam and his friends and family is both an emergency and a life lesson.

A bored Midwestern couple boards a cross-country train for an impulsive romantic getaway into the American West … but no matter how far they go, they can’t seem to get away from the fantasies, fetishes and doubts below the surface of their marriage. Great Western Wanderlust comically chronicles the St. Louis-to-Los Angeles adventure of Greg and Kristi, two thirtysomethings hiding their true wants and needs beneath their stolid Midwestern upbringing. As their escape from suburbia turns into a vacation from hell, their trip west also changes their relationship – they feel the pull of freedom and adventure, and the classic American impulse to find their true selves on the open road.

Stuck in her smog-plagued hometown, Mary Toiler Moore dreams up an escape from her weird mother and stifling life - a mental escape to Montana.

A father, a daughter, a slacker and a survivor cross paths one summer at a lakefront campground, each of them avoiding the issues they’re afraid to face. Peter is glimpsing his mortality and yearning selfishly for the freedom and hedonism he reveled in as a young man; his daughter Christina views his mid-life crisis as a pathetic second adolescence and wants him to support her as she faces the biggest dilemma she has ever known. Tav is taking a break from retail and college, lighting up the occasional joint and beginning to realize that he doesn’t know what to do with his life; his boss Janis worries that she has wasted hers after a legacy of living the wrong way. Over time, Janis and Tav get to know Christina and Peter - confronting them about the truths they have evaded while also recognizing the fears that paralyze their own lives. At the end of this character-driven play, this quartet realizes that life is about doing the hard thing – a truth which cannot be avoided.

As the hippie era gives way to the Me Decade, a young man searches for something to believe in. Twenty-year-old David Sloop doesn’t have a clue what to do with his life … just a desire to find some truth in a country grappling with a deceitful President and an especially pointless war. Then a trip to Los Angeles takes him into a peaceful canyon, and into the arms of a Bible-based cult offering love and a sense of family – exactly what he needs most. David embarks on an American spiritual misadventure, searching for God and meaning under the guidance of Nathan Kind, a self-professed “prophet” and father figure who sees remarkable potential in his newest disciple. Surprising even himself, David finds the courage to save a life, and effect what seems to be a miracle. David’s father tracks him down, but he can’t bring him home: David is proud of his new life and identity. As Nathan’s plans grow less theistic and increasingly capitalistic, David becomes increasingly important in the group’s future … a future that seems to offer less and less personal freedom. David’s father approaches the cult again under pretense of patronage, but actually to abduct and deprogram his son. In the aftermath of a violent kidnapping, David makes a terrible choice … and then another. Lost in the illusions of his life and rejected by those who purport to love him, David disappears in the middle of a fiery night. He is never seen again, and only his testament remains … the mystery of a young man caught up in belief.

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