Curse of the Starving Class
(Three acts) This Obie Award-winning play, a darkly comic exploration of the American family psyche, is an expository look at four family members of the Tate family who live on a Californian farm. As the four characters shift into adolescence, adulthood and old age, they face the loss of their farm to debt and developers. Weston is the alcoholic father who has driven his family deep into debt. Ella is the mother who is seeking solace outside of her marriage and dreams of escape to exotic locations. Daughter Emma plans to become a mechanic, and pursues her 4-H projects and horseback fantasies with an adolescent?s intensity. Son Wesley looks for a way to keep his family together while changing from a boy to a man. Various secondary characters are interspersed in the story, each trying to exploit the family and take over their land. The play examines the death of the American family as hardship clouds all interaction and any mutual understanding is lost.