American Detour

(Work in Progress. Interested producers should contact the playwright's agent, Pam Winter.)

At night I’d close my eyes and see nothing. Just black. I’d fall asleep. And when I next opened my eyes, you know what I’d see? The next day. Not a new day. Just the next one.

- Terry - American Detour

1975. A young man wakes up and realizes he has no dream. He looks south and sees a land that is apparently chock-full of them. So Terry sticks out his thumb and hitch-hikes over the border. Within a week, he has a career, a sugar daddy and a new home in the middle of a burning city.

2011. Terry is once again standing on the side of a highway, thumb out. As it turned out, the Dream included an amazing discovery, a horrific murder, an award-winning film, a sympathetic shrink, and a Pardon. Now Terry has to decide if he’s going to flee the scene – or take another crack at the dangerous business of dreaming.

American Detour is an outsider’s look at life on the inside. It has a cast of two, and runs 80 minutes.

American Detour is a work in progress. As part of its developmental process, a public performance/reading was held at the Columbus Museum of Art. Katherine Burkman directed.

Newsflash!: March 1, 2013: Congratulations to Elaine Romero for winning the 2013 Blue Ink Playwriting Award for her script “Graveyard of Empires”. The competition was sponsored by the American Blues Theatre in Chicago and there were 1100 entries.

The two Finalists were Dave Carley for “American Detour” and Jim Henry for “Jellofish”.