SYNOPSIS
Ryan is a quiet young man who has a good job, a steady girlfriend, and a nice, normal life in Oklahoma – that is, until Ginger arrives. With Ginger come memories of a wanton and wildly creative boy Ryan thought he had buried ten years ago. But can anyone kill the part of themselves that is most madly alive? Ryan will soon find out.
Being a man in Oklahoma is the loneliest fate in the world.
FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT
Every play I write begins with an impulse to simply tell a compelling story. And so it began with Lancelot. In
writing Lancelot I was able to bring together themes that interest me a great deal. Those themes include the role of the
artist in society, the Outsider who breaks social and sexual boundaries, and male identity in America.
Lancelot is set in the American West – Oklahoma to be exact, where I have some family roots. I have set a number of my plays in small rural towns in the Midwest and West. If you’re an Outsider the stakes always seem higher in a small town than in a big city. e Outsider just sticks out more. The things that attract me about the West are its rugged, desolate, and bleak landscapes peopled by tough, gritty, bruised characters.
In Lancelot the protagonist is Ryan. He works hard, goes to church, and plays by the rules. On the surface Ryan represents the ideal young man of the Western heartland. But underneath Ryan typifies a very different American male icon – the artist as outlaw and sexual rebel. Whether he is able to reconcile those two opposing sides of American maleness is the play’s big dramatic question.
REVIEWS
There is a lot of pretty flesh showcased in Lancelot, and it’s very up-close and personal… That flesh is draped on a bare-bones production of a powerful play…. In Lancelot, the plot hangs on a long ago seduction of a sensitive thirteen-year- old boy by his twenty-six-year-old art teacher… Fechter’s script is tight and layered, and speaks to big themes about art and talent, gender, and morality. His characters are complicated and do not happily resolve themselves in ninety minutes.
KATHLEEN CAMPION, Front Row Center
Ryan, the central character in Steven Fechter’s compelling and psychologically complex new drama, Lancelot, having its world premiere under the direction of Thom Fogarty at The Gym at Judson… The excellent actors and their director mine the script for every ounce of truth as the layers are peeled away bit by bit. And even when we are pretty sure where things are heading, the play offers up surprising twists that prevent any of the characters from behaving exactly as we might expect. The thrill of watching the plot untold is in seeing the walls closing in on Ryan as he strives to decide which trap door to fall through – for trap doors are all that are available to him.
HOWARD MILLER, Upstage-downstage