Real Dogs

REAL DOGS is a play about the end of the world, seen from a basement in the suburbs. It begins when Pattersons receive a gift: a wooden dog. Of course a real dog is nice, but there was a fear: that the dog would bite, that the neighbors would complain, that the dog would be hit by a car, that the grief would overwhelm the family.

This play is about fear: fear of your neighbors, fear of the outside, fear of your own impulses. It’s about the creeping fear of change, the fear of what’s outside, the self-fulfilling fear of collapse. A particularly American fear: of being attacked, of economic collapse, of government run wild. It paralyzes, this fear, it gets in your bones. In this play, fear is a main character. It watches over the Pattersons’ house, like the wooden dog. It feeds on itself, creating its own reality, becoming its own justification. The Pattersons live in a state of fear, subject to its strange laws. The language they use is poetic and fragmented; like people under extreme stress, they are confused, scattered, incoherent until they suddenly stumble onto lucidity.