Salvage

Sunday, February 16th, 11am at Barter's Smith Theatre

Six months after Father’s death, Mother sends an urgent email to her adult children, summoning them home to collect their things. Brother and Sister arrive to find their childhood home in a state of collapse and strewn end to end with the stuff of their lives - dolls, clothes, books, toys -and in one growing pile, the stuff of their father, his vests and cassette tapes and Star Wars ties. Soon the truth is out in this interracial, intergenerational family: Mother is tossing in the towel and “going West” the very next day. In the hours that follow, and as boxes are packed and unpacked and packed again, Mother will fight to leave, and Brother, Sister, and Grandpa will fight to stay, and as they each fight to set the course of their lives, they will struggle with how to save themselves and each other. What will they keep? What will they toss? What will they transform into something new?

Written by: Mary Lynn Owen

Mary Lynn Owen is a playwright, actor, and teacher based in Atlanta, Georgia. Her first full-length play, KNEAD, received its world premiere at The Alliance Theatre in November 2018 and its second full production at Aurora Theatre in January 2024. KNEAD, a one-person play in which Mary Lynn also performs, is the recipient of the 2019 Gene Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, and The Alliance Theatre’s Reiser Lab Grant for New Work. Successive plays include SALVAGE, a 2022 finalist for the O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference and featured in the 2023 Ethel Woolson Lab Festival and the 2023 Unexpected Play Festival; and LADY PARTS, selected for the 2019 Working Title Playwrights First Light Series, Theatrical Outfit’s 2020 Unexpected Play Festival, and named a 2020 semi-finalist for the O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference. Her commissions include Alabama Shakespeare Southern Writers Festival and MultiShades Atlanta, and she is the recipient of a MAP Grant through Synchronicity Theatre for the development of a play about Women and Work. In 2022, she was named the Travis Bogard Artist in Residence at The Eugene O’Neill Foundation in Danville, California, where she also received the Carey Perloff Award, given to an established theater artist who desires to transition to playwriting. Mary Lynn’s professional affiliations include The Dramatist’s Guild, Working Title Playwrights, Actor’s Equity Association, and SAG-Aftra.  She is a recently named finalist for the 2024-25 Dramatists Guild National Playwrights Fellows program.