THE STORY: On the Fourth of July in Hartford in 1996, June, a sixteen-year-old white boy, meets up with a closeted, married black man he’s met over the Internet. On the same night, in the same city, this man’s sixteen-year-old daughter agrees to go out with Dexter, a twenty-year-old low-level drug dealer. In and around the city, on the American night of independence, these two couples get to know each other, moving from strangers to intimates. In lonely landscapes of movie theatres, fast food restaurants, darkened churches and public parks, they discover the limits of desire and the possibilities for transcendence.
“…smart, broken-hearted…Mr. Shinn has a precocious and forgiving sense of how power shifts in the game of sexual pursuit…He promises to be a playwright to reckon with…” —The New York Times.
“A voice emerges from an American place. It’s got humor, sadness and a fresh and touching rhythm that tell of the loneliness and secrets of life…[a] poetic, haunting play.” —New York Post.
