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A heartrending yet hopeful play about two men’s parallel desires to build a secure foundation for their families even as everything around them is falling apart.
At first glance, Ryan and Keith are two men in Twin Falls, Idaho, who have nothing in common. Ryan, a factory worker in the throes of financial instability, seeks help from Keith, a mortgage broker, to secure a loan. The two bond over their love of their daughters, as well as “a specific kind of sadness” that lives in the gap between their dreams and realities. Affecting in its seeming simplicity, Hunter’s play ultimately affirms, if not the existence of God, then at least the possibility that something sacred can come from the connection between two people.
“A heartbreaker of a play, A Case for the Existence of God is another of Hunter’s public explorations of his own private Idaho: a post-boom, existential vastness in which emotional and economic collapse are conjoined. And though A Case makes the connection between personal and societal calamity more explicit than ever, it may also be the purest example yet of Hunter’s approach to playwriting as an experiment in empathy.”
—Jesse Green, New York Times
“Samuel D. Hunter’s soulful two-hander is the kind of play whose comedy is drawn directly from the depths of its tragedy.”
—Rollo Romig, New Yorker
“In A Case for the Existence of God, Hunter has reduced his components to a bare minimum, offering us superfans a chance to marvel at his elegant way with exposition and the stealthy way he lures us down into the deep end of the emotional pool. We can follow Hunter as he looks deeper into his characters than the usual drama would—past behavior, past childhood, past successes and failures. He winds up considering the pas-sage of time itself, and demonstrates how he gets his sacred effects, one melodic line at a time.”
—Helen Shaw, Vulture
“Mr. Hunter, one of the finest playwrights at work today, focuses on the complexities of specific human beings—appealingly unexceptional ones—and the trials, large and small, that life throws their way. Mr. Hunter’s plays are notable, or rather remarkable, for their laid-back simplicity and the depth of the compassion he shows for his characters. In A Case for the Existence of God, both are on exemplary view.”
—Charles Isherwood, Wall Street Journal
Samuel D. Hunter’s other plays include Little Bear Ridge Road, A Case for the Existence of God, The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), Greater Clements, Lewiston/Clarkston, The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, The Healing, and The Harvest. He has been awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, a Hull-Warriner Award, and a Drama Desk Award, among others. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard. He holds an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Idaho.