Joe Barnes

Joe Barnes’ first play, Happy Hour, premiered in 2006 as part of the Edward Albee New Playwrights Series. He has had a number of plays produced since then, including The Black Dog, Second Chances, The Tragedy of the Tragedy of King Lear, The Schifflet Project, The Workshop, Inventory of Effects, Quality Time, The Surgeon General’s Warning, Just Like That, and Sister Fred. Eight of his plays – Summer Friends, Acts of Faith, Remembering Rory, The Unicorn, The Call, Tastes like Chicken, Riding the Elephant, Shavetop Mountain, and Footnotes -- have been read at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. His plays The Good Son and True Crime were read by Wordsmyth Theatre in 2009 and 2015, respectively. Barnes is a resident of Houston, Texas.

Joe Barnes’ first play, Happy Hour, premiered in 2006 as part of the Edward Albee New Playwrights Series. He has had a number of plays produced since then, including The Black Dog, Second Chances, The Tragedy of the Tragedy of King Lear, The Schifflet Project, The Workshop, Inventory of Effects, Quality Time, The Surgeon General’s Warning, Just Like That, and Sister Fred. Eight of his plays – Summer Friends, Acts of Faith, Remembering Rory, The Unicorn, The Call, Tastes like Chicken, Riding the Elephant, Shavetop Mountain, and Footnotes -- have been read at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. His plays The Good Son and True Crime were read by Wordsmyth Theatre in 2009 and 2015, respectively. Barnes is a resident of Houston, Texas.

Scripts

Tastes like Chicken

by Joe Barnes

3
Cast Size
5
Genre
comedy,
dark comedy,
farce,
mystery/thriller,
political,
satire

“Tastes like Chicken” is a blackly comic exploration of the fragility at the heart of the modern family, the perils of self-fulfillment, and the power of the past to shape the present in unexpected, sometimes terrifying ways.

At the beginning of the play, the Lloyds are a not very happy bunch. The father, Fred, is facing competition from a younger colleague at work. The son, Sawyer, has dropped out of...

“Tastes like Chicken” is a blackly comic exploration of the fragility at the heart of the modern family, the perils of self-fulfillment, and the power of the past to shape the present in unexpected, sometimes terrifying ways.

At the beginning of the play, the Lloyds are a not very happy bunch. The father, Fred, is facing competition from a younger colleague at work. The son, Sawyer, has dropped out of music school because of depression. The daughter, Brittany, is a frustrated animal rights activist. But the mother, Marcia, keeps everyone together through a relentless optimism encouraged (off-stage) by Dr. Silverstein, a specialist in “serenity studies.”

This uneasy equilibrium is destroyed one Thanksgiving with the appearance of Marcia’s brother, Todd Blunt, with an iguana (Stan) in tow. Todd proceeds to ingratiate himself with every member of the Lloyd family, except Marcia, who is soon an outcast in her own home. Todd – whose secret only his sister knows – propels the family towards destruction as Marcia watches helplessly. The comedy – and the horror – climax with Todd’s complete victory over his sister and her murderous effort to set things right.

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