About This Show
Bootstrap Productions and Industrial Arts Theatre at the Federal Theatre
presents Trolls, a world premiere production by Kathleen O’Neill Hopkins.
As evening approaches the street and bridge dwellers, the trolls, come out.
Billy is a man who has lived under bridges for years. He is a philosopher of sorts, genteel in his own way, and is aware that he must keep himself segregated from the rest of humanity. Libby is demented and cannot communicate except inside her own head. She waits in anticipation for Harry to come and take her out of the hospital. Clay and Malcolm live hand-to-bottle-to-mouth, although Malcolm would describe himself as a property owner: it’s his bridge, after all. Sylvia was the well-to-do wife of an attorney. Now homeless she spends her days collecting cans to recycle, pretending she is collecting for the girl scouts. Things will change once she meets Ernie.
You see them outside liquor stores, digging into dumpsters, and on the street corners holding cardboard signs. But there is a culture, a life and a true dignity in these creatures. Trolls will give you a vision of the homeless that is rarely-perhaps never seen by the “top-dwellers.”
