Vital Theatre Company’s first Main Stage production of its 2004/2005 season is Croatoan by Ross Maxwell, directed by Aimée Hayes. The play weaves an eccentric story of American mythology, obsession, love
and memory, set amidst an impending hurricane. Trudy and her precocious
thirteen-year-old daughter Zoë have been abandoned by Trudy’s husband and the only clue to his whereabouts is a postcard with the word “Croatoan”
scrawled upon it. Trudy has transformed herself from a Native American into a bizarre mix of sexualized matinee idols, trying to forget the past, while
Zoë eagerly awaits each new cryptic postcard from her father. When a
mysterious young hitchhiking bible salesman arrives in search of this same
man, he forces Zoë to choose between history and a future of her own. Also caught in the hurricane’s path is Clinton, an African-American doctoral
candidate in search of the last funeral song of the Gullah people and
Jarrel, the handy-man doggedly trying to save their doomed beach home.
Appropriate for audiences 17+