Shay
by Anne Commire

Shay is a compulsive, self wounding clown forced and unwilling to act the role of adult and mother.

A high school dropout and pregnant at 15, she's spent the subsequent years strapped to her family and as the play develops she is sinking.

Her family considers her merely an eccentric, refusing to go out of the house and craving isolation.

Her husband spends his time watching TV football, her daughter is in orbit on diet pills and her son, a misfit G man, promises to follow his parents into disenchanted retreat from an uncongenial world.

The play climaxes into a double edged comic horror when Shay's daughter surprises her by bringing home her prospective in laws.

Shay panics; then, forced into hospitality, she springs on her guests sprinkling them with wisecracks.