About the Play:

Down the Road is a full-length drama by Lee Blessing. A convicted serial killer of 19 young women is being interviewed by a husband-and-wife team for a "true crime" book. As each detail is exposed, the couple gets drawn further into the twisted psyche of their subject. Down the Road is a powerful thriller about good and evil and reflects on the public's fascination with crime and the criminal mind – and the writers who attempt to satisfy this hunger.

Down the Road follows a husband and wife journalism team, as they embark on a new stage of their careers... hired to ghostwrite a "true crime" book about a notorious serial killer. William "Bill" Reach, has admitted to the murders of nineteen women, but there may have been more. Both seasoned writers, Dan and Iris Henniman expect no problems in dealing with the content. However, they do not expect just how much this man will get into their heads, both in and out of the interview room. The writers are manipulated by this killer who wants to imprint his infamy in the psyche of the world, and they are ruled by the commissioning publisher, who wants a lurid best-seller. As the couple spends time with Reach, we start to see changes in Dan and Iris as they grow more and more uncertain of the ethics of what they are doing. Are they simply relating terrifying events, or are they helping readers consume rape, murder and mutilation as if they are consuming any other product of our society? Are they, in fact, helping to turn Bill Reach into a celebrity? How far would you go to have a best selling book? How does society punish or reward sensational acts of violence? Does the media help prevent crimes like these...or does it promote them? Down The Road explores many of these questions and it is a night of theatre your audience won't soon forget.

Down the Road premiered in 1989 at La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California, and was subsequently presented in 1991 at the famed Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the Festival of New American Plays, an influential showplace for playwrights. Since then it has become a staple of regional repertory houses.

Cast: 1 female, 2 male

What people say:

"…compelling theater…Blessing has a penchant (and a skill) for probing his chosen issues with intelligence and respect for their complexity, his dramatic style is clear and simple." — Variety

"With Down the Road, Blessing again shows his superiority at presenting an intellectual yet emotional look at the various facets of a twisted, virtually unsolvable issue. And if a play's success is measured by how much it disturbs emotions and stimulates the discussion, Down the Road ranks as a major achievement." — Variety

"It's a delicately textured, beautifully balanced morality play in the guise of a psychological drama. It is the most serious and intellectually rewarding play to have appeared this year." — Los Angeles Herald Examiner

About the Playwright:

Lee Blessing is an American playwright who remained in his hometown of Minneapolis working in regional theater before relocating to New York when he was in his forties. The author of over twenty plays and screenplays, he been nominated for Tony and Olivier Awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize. He is professor emeritus at Rutgers University, where for a dozen years he headed the Graduate Playwriting Program of Mason Gross School of the Arts.