The Virginia playwright Royal Shiree — a graduate of the celebrated MFA program at Hollins University — has posted this review of my play EXTRACTED on the New Play Exchange:

“ To say “Extracted” is an allegory is an understatement. The symbolism represented in forms of colors, characters, poems, and even location touches upon the current state of confusion and conflict. The use of a truck profoundly suggests how fast and far-reaching ideologies fester; sports is a common theme and implies much more than a game with a flavor of masculinity. To quote and reference history is disturbing to our present and forces us to look inward and recognize ourselves. This would be interesting to see the director’s perspective on staging this. ”

— Royal Shiree

New York audiences will get a chance on Nov. 16, when there’s a staged reading of the script through the auspices of Equity Library Theater at NYPL-Belafonte, 203 West 115th St.

Previously, EXTRACTED was a semi-finalist in the Southwest Theatre Productions competition in Austin, Texas.

I’m there!

My play EXTRACTED was a semi-finalist in the Southwest Theatre Productions competition in Austin, Texas. Six plays were finalists, so in theory my play could have finished as high as seventh. This marks the second time this play has gotten some recognition (just no productions yet). Earlier a theatre in New York passed on the script but sent word that “We quite enjoyed the play’s precise comic sensibility and symbolic meditation on contemporary America.”

Here’s the synopsis of the show:

EXTRACTED
A dark allegorical tale about modern politics and immigration. An American truck driver sleeping in his cab at a truckstop in southern California is awoken by two teenage girls, Sam and Libby. He thinks they’re truckstop prostitutes and tries to run them away. Instead, the one explains that she has rescued her sister from drug gangs in Los Angeles and is trying to take her home to safety in New York. The rescued sister is our allegorical Statue of Liberty. In fact, she has not been rescued; she has been drugged against her will, for reciting — and practicing — the poem at the statue’s base: “give me your tired, your poor . . . ” As the roadtrip across North American unfolds, we see that the older sister is not, in fact, a protector and rescuer, but rather her kidnapper, who is trying to brainwash her. Along the way, the keep running into another truck driver, who is taking the same route across the country, and a mysterious woman. In the climactic scene, Sam has hired a tattoo artist to blot out “The New Colossus” poem that Libby has tattooed on her. Just then the two mystery figures burst in — revealing themselves to be special agents for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are mounting a hostage rescue and extraction to take Libby to safety in Canada. They are joined by a Mexican intelligence agent, as well, who they had previously met along the way at a truckstop. Cast: Eight — Five female (including who can pass for teens, and one Latina adult), three male.