Synopsis

4 men, 1 women, 1 boy

1962

America’s postwar innocence teeters on the brink of massive social change: racial integration, feminism, school prayer, Vietnam, Bob Dylan and The Beatles, the birth control pill… Such is the world of DUCK AND COVER, by a playwright/novelist who remembers his own boyhood innocence sheltered in a suburban Massachusetts home much like the one he’s created for the stage.

Twelve-year-old Stevie Whitebottom wants a pair of sneakers. Claire, his housewife mother, would like to get her drivers license. But Hugh, the regimented yet loving patriarch, sees sneakers and women drivers as the first steps to anarchy.  Just your average American household—until Claire’s brother Bunny, an eccentric trumpeter recently returned from the jazz clubs of Paris, lands on their doorstep unannounced, 
along with his African-American pianist and partner Eddie.

Awards

• WINNER, 2014 John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award, New England Theatre Conference
• Awarded BEST PLAY Northern Writes Fest, Bangor, ME, May ‘13
• Winner BEST PLAY in Dezart Performs 2014 Festival of New Plays
• Nominated BEST SCRIPT, Spotlight Awards, Portsmouth Herald, March ‘14
• Nominated for seven Desert Star Awards (Palm Springs, CA): Outstanding Production-Staged Reading, Outstanding Director of a Staged Reading, Outstanding Lead Male Performer-Staged Reading, Outstanding Lead Female Performer-Staged Reading, and three nominations for Outstanding Supporting Male Performer-Staged Reading

Productions

• Actors Studio, Newburyport, MA, June 2012
• West End Studio Theatre, Portsmouth, NH, Feb 2013
• Acorn Studio Theater, Westbrook, ME, May 2013
• Dezart Performs (staged reading), Palm Springs, CA, Apr 2014
• Full production, Dezart Performs, Jan-Feb 2015;
• Players’ Ring, Portsmouth, NH Sept 2015
• York Theatre Company