A Case for the Existence of God

by Samuel D. Hunter

Overview

A heartrending yet hopeful play about two men’s parallel desires to build a secure foundation for their families even as everything around them is falling apart.

Samuel D. Hunter’s latest play introduces us to two men who at first glance have nothing in common: Ryan is undereducated, awful with money, and reeling from a painful divorce with the mother of his child, while Keith is polished, financially savvy, and the gay single caretaker of a foster daughter. When Ryan seeks Keith’s help to secure a loan and buy back twelve acres that formerly belonged to his family, the two men bond over their love of their daughters, as well as “a specific kind of sadness” that emerges in the gap between their dreams and their realities. While never shying away from the inevitable heartache of life on the margins, Hunter’s play ultimately affirms, if not the existence of God, then at least the possibility that something sacred can emerge from the connection between two people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636701950
Publisher:	Theatre Communications Group
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	436 KB

About the Author

Samuel D. Hunter's plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, The Healing, The Harvest, Lewiston, Clarkston, and Greater Clements. He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, a 2012 Whiting Writers Award, the 2013 Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, the 2011 Sky Cooper Prize, the 2008 PONY/Lark Fellowship, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Idaho. His plays have been produced in New York at Playwrights Horizons, LCT3, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Clubbed Thumb and Page 73, and around the country at such theaters as Seattle Rep, South Coast Rep, Victory Gardens, Williamstown Theater Festival, The Old Globe, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, the Dallas Theater Center, Long Wharf Theatre, and elsewhere. His work has been developed at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils, and PlayPenn. He is a member of New Dramatists, an Ensemble Playwright at Victory Gardens, a member of Partial Comfort Productions, and was a 2013 Resident Playwright at Arena Stage. A native of northern Idaho, Sam lives in NYC. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.

Editorial Reviews

A heartbreaker of a play, A Case for the Existence of God is another of Hunter’s public explorations of his own private Idaho: a post-boom, existential vastness in which emo­tional and economic collapse are conjoined. And though A Case makes the connection between personal and societal calamity more explicit than ever, it may also be the purest example yet of Hunter’s approach to playwriting as an experiment in empathy.” —Jesse Green, New York Times

“Samuel D. Hunter’s soulful two-hander is the kind of play whose comedy is drawn directly from the depths of its tragedy.” —Rollo Romig, New Yorker

“In A Case for the Existence of God, Hunter has reduced his components to a bare mini­mum, offering us superfans a chance to marvel at his elegant way with exposition and the stealthy way he lures us down into the deep end of the emotional pool. We can follow Hunter as he looks deeper into his characters than the usual drama would—past behavior, past childhood, past successes and failures. He winds up considering the pas-sage of time itself, and demonstrates how he gets his sacred effects, one melodic line at a time.” —Helen Shaw, Vulture

“Mr. Hunter, one of the finest playwrights at work today, focuses on the complexities of specific human beings—appealingly unexceptional ones—and the trials, large and small, that life throws their way. Mr. Hunter’s plays are notable, or rather remarkable, for their laid-back simplicity and the depth of the compassion he shows for his characters. In A Case for the Existence of God, both are on exemplary view.” —Charles Isherwood, Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher