boomslang

BITTEN BY A BOOMSLANG

Lowell Carpenter, a successful Staten Island prosthetist, is embarking on an expansion of his thriving clinic. His domestic partner, Alejandro, encourages him to take on a charity project. When Lowell reads an article about the dismemberment of children from the African country of Sierra Leone as part of a bloody civil war, he experiences an almost mystical compulsion to intervene. He decides to bring two young refugees to the United States, outfit them with state-of-the-art prosthetic devices, and then, leveraging this success, start a prosthetics clinic in Sierra Leone. One of the refugees, a youth named Brima, has his own ideas about how the project should proceed. He is determined to stay in the United States and will do whatever is necessary to make that happen. Like the African boomslang, Brima moves quietly and quickly. Lowell must confront the fact that doing a simple good deed can be much more difficult than he ever imagined. Inspired by real life events.

CONTESTS

AACT NewPlayFest

2017, Finalist

DEVELOPMENTAL WORKSHOP

National Theater of Ghana

June 2011: Accra Ghana

Lab Productions

The Seabury Quinn Playwright's Festival

May 2011: Athens, OH