First published 2019
Angela huddles in her basement while a tornado bears down on her home. She warns the audience that she cannot be trusted to tell her story accurately, yet she begins to speak anyway. As the storm rages overhead, she examines the violence and abuse that have shaped her life. Her monologue reveals the circumstances that led to this moment of danger. The play draws from Hamlet's soliloquy about existence and death, transforming Shakespeare's meditation into a contemporary woman's reckoning with American violence. Angela's reflections expose the role of firearms and abuse in her predicament. Through her unreliable narration, the truth of her situation gradually emerges. The approaching tornado becomes both literal threat and metaphor as Angela confronts the traumas that have defined her existence.
Genres: drama, american-fiction, abuse, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: America
Period: Contemporary
35 pages · Paperback · Dramatist's Play Service
Content warnings: abuse, domestic-violence, violence