By David Davis
A full-length play in one act
1 Male, late 30’s or early 40’s
1 Female, mid to late 20’s
One interior set, a small room used as an office in an isolated ranch in the desert of New Mexico, somewhere around the present.
Mattie Blair, a psychology graduate student at a university in New Mexico, invades a small home in the wilderness in search of a man she thinks is a hermit, as part of her research for a graduate thesis. However, the man she finds there does not meet her image of a hermit. He is neither old nor religious. He wants to get rid of her. She wants to figure him out. He asks her to leave. She refuses. He hits her. She still refuses to leave. He hits her again. She still refuses to leave. He calls the police. She keeps probing for what has driven him to this isolated ranch. He begins to probe for what is making her so desperate to know about silence and isolation. The police are delayed. There is discussion of people and civilizations that have disappeared. Mind games get played. The police are delayed again. Some, but not all, truth comes out. The police never arrive.
David Davis 