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Buicks

$13.00
Qty:
Full Length, Comedy/Drama
2 men, 2 women (doubling)
Total Cast: 4, Flexible Set
ISBN-13: 978-0-8222-1968-2


MIN. PERFORMANCE FEE: $105 per performance.
THE STORY: Bill isn’t sure how he got to this point in his life. He’s thirty-five, married with two children and lives in Fresno, California, where he owns a car dealership. Life should be full, but Bill is miserable, even if he won’t admit it. His father doesn’t respect him; his employees don’t like him; and he’s treating his wife, Kathy, badly. The only person who seems to have any esteem for him at all is his secretary, Naranja, a twenty-two-year-old Mexican immigrant who wants Bill to be her sponsor for her Green Card. When Kathy leaves Bill, taking their kids, he snaps. Desperate to bring them back, Bill hits the road to Albuquerque, where he believes they have gone, convincing Naranja to come with on the promise of helping her with the Green Card. Naranja is nervous about traveling with Bill but tries to make the best of it. Stopped at a motel that night she tells him that she would be a good car salesman and tries out her sales pitch on him. In the morning Bill discovers Kathy’s parents left Albuquerque months earlier; she has truly disappeared from him. For the first time he realizes what he has done in his life and how alone he has made himself. Seeking a friend, Bill gets drunk in a bar with a stranger. After that ends badly, Bill and Naranja finally get to the truth about each other, and Bill faces who he is and what he has become. Having hit bottom, Bill returns home to Fresno with Naranja, where she becomes a salesman, and Bill faces his future without the wife he drove away, trying to reconcile with his father and his life.
“Julian Sheppard’s BUICKS is so well written, as well as honestly unmanipulative, and so droll and touching as to deserve the categorical imperative GO!” —New York Magazine.

“BUICKS is a splendid dark comedy…equal parts Raymond Carver and Sam Shepard, with a dash of surprising optimism.” —New York Post.

“Julian Sheppard’s insistently strong BUICKS is the latest in the series of spins on Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman that have elbowed their way onto the American cultural horizon since 1949.” —TheaterMania.