Christopher Norwood as Frank, Samantha Fairfield Walsh as Belinda, and Ryan George as Jeb in Team Awesome Robot's production of "Rush," in NYC, October 2015.
RUSH
Deadwood meets Memento. With women.
It’s 1899. Frank and Belinda stand at the threshold of a new life in the Yukon Gold Rush. But are they really brother and sister? And what horror did they leave behind? Even if the law catches up with them, will it matter in this wild frontier? Told in a dark, poetic, and fractured way, RUSH asks whether escaping your past only makes it haunt you all the more.
90 minutes.
Nominee, Best Original Play, Seacoast Spotlight Awards, 2015
Nominated for 4 New York Innovative Theater Awards, 2016 (Outstanding Actress in a Featured Role Lauren Nordvig, Outstanding Set Design Jennifer Neads, Outstanding Lighting Design Chelsie McPhilimy, Outstanding Original Music Ryan McCurdy)
“Kimball exercises a poet’s finely-honed restraint, shifting and slowly stripping the talisman-like lines...Kimball’s grace with lyric and leaps is often arresting. At its best, I love how vertiginously Kimball’s script leaps and leaves us in the air: the end of a scene cuts off someone’s second thought at “Ma’am – ”; the internal memory phrases are increasingly sloughed of context. Most harrowingly, the story’s resolution is achieved with disarming simplicity, striking in its swiftness and restraint. And the show’s final memory words, stripped to verbal bone – not to mention its final gasp – caught my own breath.”
Setting
Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and the Yukon Territory. 1899-1900.
Characters
- BELINDA, any race, early 20s. Odd. Careful. Knows too much and too little about the wrong things.
- FRANK, same race as Belinda, mid- to late 20s. Quick to anger. Wasn’t always like this.
- ROSIE, Tlingit, early 20s. Practical and suspicious for every good reason. Mostly honest.
- ALICE, white, mid- to late 20s. Savvy entrepreneur with a secret or three. From Ohio.
- JEB, any age, any race, preferably black. Rough but harmless and well-meaning prospector.
- GARRISON, man, white, any age. The implacable face of the law.
- DOCTOR, woman, Scottish, any age. Has seen too much.
- NEIGHBOR, woman, any race, any age. Has not seen nearly enough.
The play can be done with six actors by doubling Doctor/Rosie (or Alice) and Neighbor/Alice (or Rosie).
Production & Development History
- Production, Team Awesome Robot, 2015
- Production, The Players' Ring, 2015
Additional workshops and readings at Snowlion Playlab, Lark Play Development Center, Hunter College.