THE STORY: Maya Deboats, a performance artist, calls together the family and friends of her recently murdered lover, Veronica, for a performance art memorial service that travels seamlessly through the past and present in an effort to reconstruct Veronica’s life. Together they create an actual, lasting structure—a work of art—which ultimately helps them to understand and move on. We learn that Veronica, who at first believes she is a lesbian, is actually a man “trapped” in a woman’s body. After much deliberation, Veronica chooses surgery and becomes “Homer.” Homer, however, is once again “trapped” when his mother calls with an invitation to her upcoming wedding. Homer attends the ceremony dressed as Veronica, where he realizes the full impact of denial-of-self that resulted in his “dressing up.” Walking home, Homer is attacked by two men who assume he is a woman. As the attack progresses, the attackers discover Homer is a man and brutally kill him. The participants of the memorial service begin to comprehend their general complicity as well as their specific innocence in the machinations that led to Homer’s death. The play becomes a larger comment on our attitudes toward change, selfhood and the boundaries of love.
A brutally witty indictment of contemporary culture’s gender and sex stereotypes as well as a probing commentary on what constitutes change, art, family, love and loss.
“Many moments of wit, insight and honest beauty…it very definitely moves.” —New York Post.
“[WALKING THE DEAD] overflows with cleverness, from its blippy leaps in and out of conventional story-telling to the bright-colored verbal cascades that decorate its emotional peaks.” —Village Voice.
“In an era of intelligent plays without much emotion and emotional plays without much intelligence, Keith Curran’s WALKING THE DEAD has both, in abundance. It’s a big and generous work, bursting the seams of conventional plot, structure and style, refusing to be contained.” —New York Law Journal.
