My thesis play, “Born 2 Hit/Let the Good Times Roll” (I don’t know the title yet!!!) will be produced in April at Ohio University’s Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwrights Festival. It runs April 15-23, 2016, and will be directed by Rani Crowe.
Cast is:
Claire Autran
Carson Cerney
Sophie Mitchem
Tyler Tanner
Here’s a rambly (not even rambling) blurb I wrote about it:
Synopsis: Leland, Michigan. The summer of 1994. The Montreal Expos are the hottest team in baseball with a collection of amazing young talent, like the 22-year-old Pedro Martinez, and are in contention to win their first World Series in franchise history. Communism has been defeated, and the Clinton White House is presiding over a time of peace and prosperity. The internet is just starting to take off, and NAFTA has just been passed. The world seems to be getting smaller, and a freer flow of information and trade seems to signal an unprecedented era of prosperity. Darkness swirls underneath the veneer of the America Dream, however. The possibility of the baseball strike looms over the season. Kurt Cobain just killed himself. O.J. Simpson went from hero to murder suspect. Factories are starting to shut down as jobs move over seas, which signal problems for the middle class.
Glenn O’Rourke, 43, had a gift as a kid. He could hit a baseball. Glenn set Michigan state record for batting average in a season in 1969 that still hasn’t been broken. Not that athletic, everyone said he was “Born to Hit.” He was drafted in the Montreal Expos original expansion draft in 1969, but only lasted two seasons in rookie ball, where he wasn’t able translate his talent in a more competitive setting. After two tours in Vietnam, Glenn O’Rourke, and then moved back home and spent the rest of his life in northwest Michigan working menial jobs and running a bait shop for tourists in the summer. After the death of his business partner, and lifelong best friend, Russell, to drugs and alcohol, Glenn wonders if he should leave the wintry climes of Michigan, and everything and everyone he knows, for California where he could coach baseball, his one true passion, year round. When he meets and hits it off with Sarah, a young college graduate waitressing tables for the summer before heading to law school in L.A., a pipe dream begins to grow into a distinct possibility. Two locals, Keith and Ally, question his wisdom in trying to start over while chasing a woman twenty years younger. Is it still possible to pursue the American Dream approaching Middle Age, or is it only the quest of the young and affluent?
Ryan Patrick Dolan 