James McLindon
Title of Play
Hitch
Date and Place of Reading
July 15, 2019
Manhattan Theatre Club Creative Center
New York City
Director
Lewis Magruder
Cast
Debra Lee Daco–Stage Directions
Andrew Rein–Lane
Diamond Essence White–Dee
How to Access the Play
Playwright's Website
About the Playwright
James McLindon’s When We Get Good Again won the Playhouse on the Square’s New Works @ The Works competition and premiered there in Memphis, winning an Ostrander Theatre Award for Best Original Script. Comes a Faery, was developed at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and premiered at the New Ohio. Salvation was premiered by Hudson Stage Company, directed by Giovanna Sardelli, to critical acclaim in The New York Times. Faith premiered at Local Theatre Company in Boulder, Colorado. Distant Music has enjoyed eight productions around the country, most recently at
the Stoneham Theatre in Boston. Mr. McLindon’s plays have been developed and/or produced at such theaters as the Broad Horizons Theatre Company, Abingdon, hotINK Festival, Irish Repertory, Lark Play Development Center, Samuel French Ten-Minute Play Festival, PlayPenn, Victory Gardens, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Lyric Stage, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and Telluride Playwrights Festival. His plays have been published by Dramatic Publishing, Smith & Kraus, Brooklyn Publishing, Applause Books, Next Stage Press, and Original Works Publishing.
About the Play
In Hitch, a white man in his 30s named Lane picks up a teenage hitchhiker named Dee and quickly discovers that all of his preconceived notions about this bi-racial young woman are wrong–as wrong as all of her preconceived notions about him. Yet, for all their differences, in both comic and poignant moments in their journey together, they discover their common ground as human beings facing tough personal situations: Lane is recovering from a devastating divorce and is at a loss as to how to be a good father to the daughter he left behind; Dee has never recovered from her father's apparent rejection and is now running away from home, where her mother’s latest boyfriend has been grooming her for sex. In revealing the truth about their lives to each other, Lane helps Dee understand her father, while she helps him understand his daughter. They both learn that they have options beyond running away.