*a geological, indigenous history of north-east Kansas as dreamt by the Topeka Holidome on 6th & Fairlawn, spring 1989

PREMIERED JANUARY 14-21, 2018 AT THE TANK

as part of the Exponential Festival

Video of production: https://vimeo.com/253471860

Jess Chayes (director), Adam R. Burnett (playwright), lisa nevada (choreographer), David Pym (videographer/projections), Kate Schroeder (performer), Lani Fu (performer) Ethan Gould (design/puppetry),  Manny Rivera (Arcade Kid/Stage Manager), Emma Rivera (lighting), Asa Wember (sound), Richard Thieriot (performer), Sam Gonzalez (performer), and Jess Cummings (Assistant Director/Production Manager).

“There is also some wonderful stuff in Adam R. Burnett’s Mac Wellman–esque comedy Holidays In/Coyote*, a super-odd playlet about a Kansas Holidome that reaches consciousness and begins to observe its denizens. Richard Thieriot is purely wonderful as an oilfield lobbyist giving a sweaty presentation about coyote eradication, and the play’s geologic time scale—a glacier slowly comes and carries the hotel complex away—strikes a interesting combined note of despair and non-anthropocentric hope” – Helen Shaw, Time Out New York  read full article

An official and unofficial fellow drink at the bar. A lone child plays the arcade. The swimming pool licks itself. Front desk checks in. A coyote roams the premises. And a glacier waits for a passing elder.

Set in a Holiday Inn Holidome – a brand of the franchise that proliferated the United States in the 1970’s & 80’s as a resort-like setting for the middle class – and in the middlest part of the country, where quiet and subtle magic occur, a family checks in to escape their home, six blocks away. Over the course of the evening the family encounters a cast of characters, all of whom are searching for escape and the thrill of new discoveries. As the hotels non-human inhabitant’s come to life, the narrative is overtaken by the surrounding landscape, and the forgotten geological, ecological and indigenous histories of the Great Plains come into sharp focus for the hotel’s guests.

Full video of Holidays In / Coyote: https://vimeo.com/253471860

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PAST SHOWINGS:

Workshop showing at University Settlement / / April 2017

Lake Tofte Residency // June 2017