Burning Man by
On the eve of a murderer’s execution, the prosecuting attorney asks her former boyfriend as a minister to help wait it out over a gourmet dinner at a nearby restaurant. Expecting his spiritual guidance, she discovers that he has left the church after a strange loss of faith during a sojourn in the Nevada desert. Further, in the near-empty dining room, their increasingly sinister waiter seems intent on...
On the eve of a murderer’s execution, the prosecuting attorney asks her former boyfriend as a minister to help wait it out over a gourmet dinner at a nearby restaurant. Expecting his spiritual guidance, she discovers that he has left the church after a strange loss of faith during a sojourn in the Nevada desert. Further, in the near-empty dining room, their increasingly sinister waiter seems intent on orchestrating what becomes very much like a ritualistic “last supper”. In the meantime, outside events begin to build as the wife of the murder victim shows up to engage in a surprising anti-execution demonstration and her teen-age daughter comes soon after to stage a noisy counter-demonstration along with an odd free-spirit researcher from the CDC who sets about re-creating the infamous Burning Man celebration right in the middle of everything. In response, the attorney gets taken up with the extravagant meal and the ex-minister is pulled into the center of the action outside. The crowd begins to construct a giant wooden effigy of a man as news starts to circulate suggesting the possibility of a last-minute reprieve for the condemned man. Burning Man is a play about the treacherous ground between living out a moral philosophy and answering the provocative call of retribution. Running time 90 minutes without intermission.