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Synopsis
Del has spent 17 years bouncing among foster homes. Smart, sharp-tongued, a master mimic, she’s fed up with her world and with being Del. Faking her own death, she leaves both herself and L.A. behind — until her escape lands her in an all-day traffic jam. Fast-forward eight years. It’s opening night for the one-woman play she’s written and is starring in — a show called Breakout, about a Los Angeles traffic jam. Wildly funny, she skewers workaholics, road ragers, pickup artists, and car culture in general. Readers will see what her audience can’t — that the show is a portrait of herself, of her hunger for her mother and her terror of rejection, her free-floating identity and yearning for connection. Flashing between Del’s present and future, Breakout gives us a backstage pass into a young playwright’s psyche, letting us watch her life being transformed into an art, heartache into comedy, solitude into community, and anger gradually giving way to acceptance.
Publishers Weekly
"The author explores the way art allows people to re-examine their lives, in this chronicle of a young woman who experiences an emotional breakthrough while stranded among strangers on the San Diego Freeway, and its contribution to her work onstage," PW said. Ages 12-up. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.