Characters: 3 male, 2 female Interior Winner! 2011 Obie Award for Playwriting Nominated for the 2011 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play Samuel D. Hunter's A Bright New Boise is a earnest comedy about the meager profits of modern faith. In the bleak, corporate break room of a craft store in Idaho, someone is summoning The Rapture. Will, who has fled his rural hometown after a scandal at his Evangelical church, comes to the Hobby Lobby, not only for employment, but also to rekindle a relationship with Alex, his brooding teenage son, whom he gave up for adoption several years ago. Alex works there along with Leroy, his adopted brother and protector, and Anna, a hapless young woman who reads bland fiction but hopes for dramatic endings. As their manager, foul-mouthed Pauline, tries ceaselessly to find order (and profit) in the chaos of small business, these lost souls of the Hobby Lobby confront an unyielding world through the beige-tinted impossibility of modern faith. "This clear-eyed comedy will lift your heart." -Time Out New York "Samuel D. Hunter has offered us a humorous and touching exploration of faith and family" - NYTheatre.com "Samuel D. Hunter has effectively rendered himself a playwright to watch with A Bright New Boise...a quietly affecting drama that delves into the always thorny issues of faith, forgiveness, and second chances with great eloquence and compassion." -TheatreMania
Winner! 2013 Lucille Lortel Award Best Play Winner! 2013 Drama Desk Special Award for Significant Contribution to Theatre Winner! 2013 GLAAD Media Award Outstanding New York Theatre Nominee! 2013 Drama League Award Outstanding Production of a Play Nominee! 2013 Outer Critics Circle Awards Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play Nominee! 2013 John Gassner Award Oustanding New American Play On the outskirts of Mormon Country Idaho a six hundred pound recluse hides aw
A retirement home in northern Idaho is being shut down and only three residents and a bare-bones staff remain. When a record breaking blizzard blows into town and an elderly resident disappears into the storm everyone is brought to face their own mortality.
Eddie manages an Italian chain restaurant in Pocatello-a small unexceptional American city that is slowly being paved over with strip malls and franchises. But he can't serve enough Soup Salad & Breadstick Specials to make his hometown feel like home. Against the harsh backdrop of Samuel D. Hunter's Idaho this heartbreaking comedy is a cry for connection in an increasingly lonely American landscape.
Twenty-five years ago a motley group of friends met as kids at a summer camp where the head counselor secretly taught them that their disabilities could be "cured" through the power of prayer. Today the group has gathered to mourn the untimely passing of one of its members. Over the course of the night old wounds are uncovered friendships are tested and the truth surrounding their late friend becomes troublingly clear.
In the basement of a small evangelical church in southeastern Idaho a group of young missionaries is preparing to go to the Middle East. One of them - a young man who has recently lost his father - has bought a one-way ticket. But his plans are complicated when his estranged sister returns home and makes it her mission to keep him there.
In the fictional mining town of Greater Clements Idaho wealthy out-of-staters have begun purchasing properties leaving lifelong residents - largely blue-collar workers - disenfranchised and disenchanted. Practical unpretentious Maggie the divorced owner of a failing Mine Tour and Museum business cares for her troubled adult son who has moved back home to recover. As Maggie contemplates closing her business an old flame visits and asks her to join him in a new life beyond the desolate town's limits. Through quirky humor keen observation and deeply sensitive and idiosyncratic characters Greater Clementsexplores just how hard it can be to leave one's past behind.
Acclaimed for his gentle, complex characterizations, Samuel D. Hunter's bighearted and funny plays explore the quiet desperation running through many American lives. "The Whale" tells the story of a six hundred-pound shut-in's last chance at redemption and of discovering beauty in the most unexpected places when he reaches out to his long-estranged--and severely unhappy--daughter. Hunter's second piece, the Obie Award-winning "A Bright New Boise," is a philosophical investigation of faith and search for meaning in rural Idaho where a disgraced evangelical is forced to take a minimum-wage job at the local Hobby Lobby craft store in an effort to reunite with his estranged son. Praise for "The Whale" "Beautifully devastating... "The Whale" manages to be about so very much at once: writing, parenting, teaching, religion, body image, overeating, the price paid by gay couples born in the wrong state or just a few years too soon. But, most of all, "The Whale" is a remarkably eloquent exploration of the way the need for honesty overwhelms us when we sense that our time is short." -Chris Jones, "Chicago Tribune" "A vibrant, provocative new play... The sharp-eared skill and sensitivity with which Hunter explores his thickly layered material are matched by his fair-mindedness." -Michael Feingold, "Village Voice" "Extraordinary... Hunter has constructed an outsize, gothic scenario in tender miniature, against a backdrop so blandly bleak we brace ourselves for despair: the sound of cascading highway traffic braids itself with the crashing surf inside Charlie's head. Is it all too much? Never for a second." -Scott Brown, "New York" "A deeply affecting and piercingly amusing play about guilt and connection... Hunter has given all of these funny-sad lost souls details that emerge bit b y bit and twist and expand the story in compelling ways." -Joe Dziemianowicz, "New York Daily News" ""The Whale" is a tragedy in a minor key, about a man torn between flesh and spirit... Humane, sharp and often funny." -David Cote, "TimeOut New York" "Samuel D. Hunter's compelling, psychologically complex play takes the audience to the confounding no man's land of nihilism." -John Lahr, "New Yorker" Praise for "A Bright New Boise" "A dark, droll and ultimately explosive work... Funny, compassionate and disturbing all at once, Hunter's quintessentially American scenario portrays an individual trapped in an emotional and cultural wasteland, his life configured by uncaring impersonal forces, his spirit hobbled by unnamed guilt." -Deborah Klugman, "LA Weekly" "A simple, superb little heartland heartbreaker... This is a rube tragedy--a respectful and honest-feeling one, for a change, with unquenchable humor and scrupulous emotional honesty--and by jingo, it sings." -Scott Brown, "New York" "Exhilarating... "A Bright New Boise" is an unsparing account of the hunger pangs in the barren American gut... Hunter has such highly sensitive antennae for the look and rhythm of mundane places that "A Bright New Boise" develops an authentic texture, separate from other pieces in its genre." -Peter Marks, "Washington Post" "Despite the crisp wind of despair that blows through Samuel D. Hunter's beautifully realized "A Bright New Boise," this clear-eyed comedy about faith's meager harvest will still lift your heart. Some of it is simple delight in craft... The rest of our pleasures lie in Hunter's gentle characterizations, a plot that mingles absurdity and genuine philosophical investigation." -Helen Shaw, "TimeOut New York" "An anxious, funny look at the messianic and the mundane in America... Hunter delivers these characters and their crucibles with tenderness and rage. For all its mistrust of religion, the play is a kind of prayer." -Charles Isherwood, "New York Times"
Samuel D. Hunter's plays are populated with characters from the bleak side of the American economy. Laced with poetic images yet drawn with meticulous realism, Hunter's plays linger in franchise restaurants, retirement facilities, mountain camps and struggling businesses. The five plays collected here, all set in Hunter's home state of Idaho, demonstrate this writer's knack for exposing, without condescension or easy moralizing, the pathos in marginalized lives.
In his work, Samuel D. Hunter has a singular gift for exploring the decline of small-town America with an empathetic yet incisive eye. His plays take place in corners of the country that are receding from the forefront of contemporary American life, focusing on those who get left behind, isolated and disillusioned with the false promise of the American dream. This new collection contains three striking, deeply-felt plays, all set in Hunter's home state of Idaho. In Greater Clements, the longtime residents of a dying Idaho mining town have voted to unincorporate in order to retaliate against the wealthy out-of-staters who are buying up property. In doing so, they also speed the town's decline, forcing them to reckon with their desire to hold onto their history while struggling to find a path forward. In Lewiston, an aging descendant of Meriwether Lewis sells off her family's land as she becomes increasingly convinced that her family's past is a curse. But when an unexpected visitor enters the picture, she is left to consider whether any good remains in the world. In Clarkston, a young descendant of William Clark has made the journey out west from his home in Connecticut, anxious to find meaning in his own history. Faced with the reality of the diminished towns that used to make up America's shining frontier, his faith in his future and the future of the country itself begins to falter.
A heartrending yet hopeful play about two men's parallel desires to build a secure foundation for their families even as everything around them is falling apart.Samuel D. Hunter's latest play introduces us to two men who at first glance have nothing in common: Ryan is undereducated, awful with money, and reeling from a painful divorce with the mother of his child, while Keith is polished, financially savvy, and the gay single caretaker of a foster daughter. When Ryan seeks Keith's help to secure a loan and buy back twelve acres that formerly belonged to his family, the two men bond over their love of their daughters, as well as "a specific kind of sadness" that emerges in the gap between their dreams and their realities. While never shying away from the inevitable heartache of life on the margins, Hunter's play ultimately affirms, if not the existence of God, then at least the possibility that something sacred can emerge from the connection between two people.
'You have this idea in your head of the person you could be.' On a journey West to rediscover himself, Jake unexpectedly meets Chris – a kindred soul working the same night shift at a Costco in a rural American town. As their bond deepens, so does their sense of adventure. Maybe they could finally give life new meaning by chasing something more – like the intrepid American explorers who came before them. Together, they grapple with questions about sexuality, family and life's dead ends. Samuel D. Hunter's emotionally intimate play Clarkston is a modern frontier story that blazes a trail through friendship, acceptance, love and the hope of new discoveries. It was first performed at Dallas Theater Center, Texas, in 2015, and won a New Play Award from the Edgerton Foundation. It received its British premiere at Trafalgar Theatre, London, in 2025, directed by Jack Serio and starring Joe Locke, Ruaridh Mollica and Sophie Melville.
