Thom Dunn

Inspired by real-life stories, "Streets Like This" follows the lives of five people dealing with incarceration, poverty, and addiction, whose lives overlap through the same social service programs. There’s Brian, a middle-class mama’s boy who spent four months in county jail for his prescription pill addiction, and now struggles to stay clean while helping out his widowed mother; Abby, a single mom and recovering heroin addict who’s trying to win her young son back from Child Protective Services; and Crystal, a survivor of domestic violence who’s been forced to turn to prostitution to keep a roof above her family while she navigates the bureaucratic maze of poverty. Their stories are framed by Deon and Dennis, the drunk elder statesmen of the social service block who’ve spent their lives trapped in system. Deon wants to help the audience understand the intersections of poverty, addiction, and incarceration, but disgruntled Dennis can’t see beyond the fourth wall (or his internalized misogyny). Together, they break through the fourth wall, and plead with the audience to understand their struggles and stories, and make a change to the system that has trapped them all.

Marcus had planned to dash after an online-date-turned-one-night-stand. Instead, he woke up with a dead cellphone and a city on lockdown after a terrorist attack. With no way to get in touch with his job or fiancé, Marcus is stuck in an apartment with Cori, who definitely stole his identity before their date but is definitely not on the pill, and her mentally ill roommate Jayme, who just wants to finish her goddamn master's thesis. As the three of them grapple with issues of race, privilege, privacy, and more, they realize that the greatest threat is not the warzone outside but within the four walls of the apartment.

The the cops shows up.

It's the weekend of the big annual comic book convention, and Chad Mailer is a young professional comic book writer who hit his career peak five years ago with a series that he never actually finished, and he now wishes to re-ignite his career. Desperate for one last chance to prove himself to the world, Chad reaches out to Ted Thompson, a newly-divorced comic book editor with whom Chad previously worked. Ted has recently begun a new relationship with a young woman named Chloe Long, whom he met playing video games on the internet, and the two have decided to meet in person for the first time at the comic book convention as well. Meanwhile, Chad must contend with the constant heckling of Billy Horowitz, a belligerent comic book fan and self-proclaimed rogue cyborg video blogger, who is determined to destroy Chad's career because he really didn't like that one issue of Wolverine that Chad wrote that one time, and Billy's (incredibly reluctant) best friend / sidekick Calvin Elder, a closeted young comic book artist who longs to become a real-life superhero. Chad also attempts to reconcile his relationship with Kt Watts, his former creative partner -- and possibly more -- whom he has not seen in five years and whose career has now eclipsed his own.

But mostly it's about the Cyborg Head of Stan Lee.