All Dogs Must Heel

Claire and Billy are dealing with a childhood marred by emotionally distant parents. Clare is a bank teller who has two children by her husband Dag. Billy is a truck driver, his body scarred by a childhood accident in which he set himself on fire in a drug-fueled haze. It is the evening of the Fourth of July and Billy is visiting Clare and Dag, hoping to introduce them to Bobbie, a blind woman he plans to marry. A flood has just ravaged their town days earlier, leaving a thin but visible scum line on all the walls. As the couples wait for the fireworks outside, their children go missing, forcing Clare and Billy to confront a stunted childhood, leaving Clare to decide whether to escape with a man, the town outcast, waiting for her outside in his car. ALL DOGS MUST HEEL is ultimately about what constitutes a family and whether the cycle of being unloved can ever be broken.

A one act full-length in real time.
One couple, a male and female, both in their late thirties, early forties.
One set.

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