Frontieres Sans Frontieres
by Phillip Howze

Name: Frontieres Sans Frontieres
Brand: Phillip Howze
SKU: 9780573706738
Rating: 4.1 (10 reviews)

Frontieres Sans Frontieres Book Cover — Frontieres Sans Frontieres Cover

Highlights

Female

Male

105 minsPresent DayRole(s) for Asian Actor(s)Unit Set/Multiple SettingsContemporary Costumes/Street Clothes

Synopsis

Here, at the corner of a country that feels both foreign and familiar, three orphaned, stateless youth have built a simple life out of recreation and mischief-making.

Their world is rocked as a parade of immodest strangers slowly invade, offering gifts of language, medicine, art, and commerce.

As the lure of development blurs their beliefs, life and landscape mutate, threatening their long-held values, community, and humanity.

In a comic spectacle to challenge the pretense of altruism and civilization, Frontieres Sans Frontieres asks what happens when generosity looks a lot like self-interest?

How to comprehend when the promise of language matures to the tyranny of words?

Who wins and who loses in a war to hold on to the people and places we love?

Press Reviews

"10 BEST THEATRICAL PRODUCTIONS OF THE YEAR! “Linguistically acrobatic and piercingly funny, Frontieres is a whip-smart modern burlesque that deserves a wider audience."
— New York Magazine

"A brightly colored, comic fantasia on cultural imperialism [...] Mr. Howze’s intelligent, unruly and intermittently wonderful play is grounded in experience [...] There is much beauty in this abundance, and something deeply unsettling, too."
— The New York Times

"Critics' Pick! "Howze's exciting piece is a savage burlesque, a clear-eyed bouffon treatment of war."
— Time Out New York

"A kaleidoscope of funny, absurd displays of humanity swinging, pendulum-like, between the mundane and the magical, the minuscule and the grand. One moment we are zoomed in: a child turning water from a leaking roof into a triumphant cup of tea. The next moment we are zoomed out: systemic exploitation of natural resources [...] Sometimes hilarious, sometimes utterly heartbreaking, the constant flickering between innocence and pain is this play’s metronome."
— Bushwick Daily

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Noon a young girl who dresses as a girl (later, NOBLE LAUREATE)	—	—	a young girl who dresses as a girl (later, NOBLE LAUREATE)
Pan a young boy who dresses in whatever clothes he can find	male	—	a young boy who dresses in whatever clothes he can find
Thom a foreigner who dresses like a foreigner	—	—	a foreigner who dresses like a foreigner
Backpacker a foreigner who dresses like a local	—	—	a foreigner who dresses like a local
Cigarette Man a foreigner with cancer	—	—	a foreigner with cancer
W.H.O. a bureaucrat	—	—	a bureaucrat
Baby Boo a pop-star	—	—	a pop-star
Actress an ambassador	—	—	an ambassador
Militia a soldier	—	—	a soldier
Developer a planner	—	—	a planner
Noble Laureate a winner	—	—	a winner
Clown a clown	—	—	a clown
Mime a mime	—	—	a mime
Win a young girl who dresses as a boy, an imitator, a trickster	—	—	a young girl who dresses as a boy, an imitator, a trickster