About the Play:

Routed is a one-act drama by Jeffrey Sweet. This highly imaginative and very funny play employs the simplest of theatrical means to explore the plight of an unemployed Father who finds solace in taking over his son's newspaper route. He discovers that the man who fired him is the last customer on the street and takes out his antagonism on the man's newspaper. Created as a companion piece for Stops Along the Way, with which it constitutes a full evening of theatre, Routed can also be presented independently with equal effectiveness.

Routed is about an out-of-work suburbanite. Having recently been let go after a dispute with his employer, Clark is free to take over his son's newspaper route during the boy's illness. Intending only to fill in for a few days, Clark quickly develops a manic enthusiasm for the job, and is even able to take revenge on his former boss (who is on the route) by tearing the comics page out of his newspaper. Turning aside his wife's pleas that he look for another job, and ignoring his son's readiness to take the route over again, Clark stubbornly plunges on until the supervisor of the newspaper company informs him that his services are no longer required. The crisis reached, Clark turns against his family and, in the disturbing, yet touching denouement of the play, tries to wrest the delivery bag away from his son by force, only, once again, to be done in by circumstances, from within and without, which he cannot control or, sad to say, fully comprehend.

Routed was selected in 1982 by New York's Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) as part of its celebrated One-Act Play Marathon.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male

About the Playwright:

Jeffrey Sweet is an American writer, journalist, theatre historian, and teacher. He divides his time between New York and Chicago, where he has been constant presence since the beginning of that city's theatrical renaissance in the 1970s. His plays have been presented off-Broadway, internationally, and in a variety of regional and developmental theatres. A popular teacher and author of many newspaper and magazine articles, he currently teaches at Wagner College, and has taught or guest lectured at dozens of universities and professional schools.