HEARTLAND - HEART - Two Plays

HEARTLAND The action starts with an almost Twilight Zone set up: a young, Eastern man has quit his job, leaving his wife and young children without warning. He drives to the Midwest and randomly picks the home of a family to see if they will allow him to undertake a personal experiment. He wants find out who he nice people are and who the nasty people are so that he can transform the nasty ones into nice people. A family allows him to live with them and meet their friends and the boss of one. The daughter of the family is troubled and the young man talks her into a more humble and loving outlook. When he encounters the boss and tries to transform him the boss tells him to leave town or he will fire the friend that introduced them. The experience leaves the young man sobered and he realizes he has a struggle of his own that needs sorting out. He was adopted and not treated well as a child so he has to run away from intimacy. He also realizes his childhood trauma has caused a split in his sexuality. Most importantly, he concludes he needs to return home and try to work out his needs with his wife's expectations. The play can be viewed as the young man's dream wherein he awakens to the unexplored depths of his personality that he has unintentionally repressed. At the end, how is he going to cope with his awakening? HEART Following his unannounced trip to the Midwest in HEARTLAND, Bryan Crawford's wife accepts him back into their family with the understanding that they will undertake their own experiment to find out if she can live with his need for male sexual companionship. He finds a man recently emigrated from India and they agree to a friend-with benefits relationship. Julie Crawford agrees and meets Pran. Her mother supplies moral support to Julie and takes some child care duties. Bryan and Pran, however, start having a need for more non-sexual intimacy, which begins to complicate Bryan and Julie's marriage. Bryan decides he needs to protect his marriage and breaks off his relationship with Pran. Julie, however, continues a friendship with Pran, which Bryan indicated would be OK with him if he didn't have to be involved. Subsequently, Pran learns that he has a serious medical condition and needs help to maintain his life and job. Bryan and Julie decide to offer to let either Pran or her mother move into their home, which will relieve enough financial burden to help Pran. Pran and her mother, Bev, decide to decline their offer and have Pran move into Bev's house, which will help Pran. At the end Bryan and Julie have offered to help these others regardless of their own burdens and Bryan is left to see if he can sustain himself without any homosexual contacts or not.

• | Author: Steve McGregor
• | Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• | Publication Date: Jan 26, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 168 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1984261746
• | ISBN-13: 9781984261748