New York City
In the tradition of Mother Courage and Endgame, playwright Richard Caliban tells of the endgame of survival in America in Famine Plays. Nine characters are adrift in the desert that has become America: a mother, an orphan, a daughter, a husband and wife, a bus company employee, a wayward son, a business man, and a loner. With social divisions erased and the definition of “being American” meaningless, each character struggles against starvation and loneliness with either violence, denial, continual movement, or stasis. As each journeys across the country, their stories collide and the connections are as arbitrary as the new weather systems — finding another human can mean death as easily as it can mean partnership. Ultimately, there is perhaps hope, if the humans left can muster the strength and the desire.