by Olivia Facini and Daniel Flesch
(2022)
LUCINDA: I don’t know, DAVE. I don’t have a PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. I’m not Snoop Dogg.
MARGE: You mean Snoopy Dog.
LUCINDA: I did not mean the shrill girl with the bob from the Charles Brown sitcom. I was referring to the Wonderful Pistachios™ salesman with the luminous smile.
– Cross Plains
About the Play
With fast-paced dialogue between Fargo-esque Midwesterners (the nice ones) relying on pop culture-infused one-liners, elaborate animal analogies, and numerous references to a controversial amusement park, Cross Plains tells the story of unlikely friendships between a group of oddballs from the “used car capital of the mid-central Midwest.” It’s also a story about feeling lost and feeling stuck—and about realizing that it’s ok to feel that way.
A common mystery perplexes all of these characters: everyone in town seems to have lost something of importance at Soap ‘n Suds Laundromat, the beating heart of the town’s social scene. While trying to recover their lost items, the characters confront their own (mixed) desires to get out of town, realizing in the process the depth and emotional complexity of their ties to a place that, for them, will never be a fly-over zone.
Run time: 70 minutes with no intermission
We hope you were able to join us!
We hosted the first public reading of Cross Plains on Saturday, October 1 at 3 pm at Playwrights Downtown.
It featured Sagan Chen, Gil Cole, Benny Diego, Kate Hampton*, Rory Kelsch, Kianna Sadati, and Portland Thomas*.
For the Cross Plains reading program, click here.