Rain City Projects

A young woman must have a late-term abortion, and chaos ensues on several realistic and metaphysical planes.

Richard escaped to New York from a life of quiet desperation teaching junior high history in Baltimore. Now he subsidizes his alcoholic flirtation with oblivion by temping at a Madison Avenue advertising conglomerate. But once his boss Greg finally convinces him to “go permanent”, all corporate hell breaks loose. What do an obsessive-compulsive corporate comptroller, an ex-piano prodigy, a poetess-bartender and a burnt-out schoolteacher have in common? Well, for one they’re all mates on the Good Ship Manhattan, and as the action builds through the summer of 2001, whether they sense it or not, they’re sailing into some of the roughest seas this beaten old boat has ever seen.

Plucked from the audience, three contestants live and die their way through a myriad of American incarnations as they compete for the ultimate prize, perfect enlightenment. The entire history of United States becomes their playing field, from Jamestown to the World Trade Center attack and beyond, as they struggle towards their individual goals. In between lives, the contestants visit the bardo realms, wacky worlds between death and rebirth where Stonewall Jackson and Harriet Tubman are husband and wife; and people reincarnate as corporations. Even when things seem like they couldn’t get weirder, they do, as the contestants start to reincarnate as each other and the understanding begins to dawn that enlightenment is now here and nowhere; a trillion light-years and just a blink away.

Three worlds collide.