Samuel Hunter Selected Works

Inside a cubicle in a small office in southern Idaho, two men struggle to balance the confounding terms on a loan. In a departure from his acclaimed epics, Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God is a thoughtful meditation on human resilience.

In the basement of a small evangelical church in southeastern Idaho, a group of young missionaries is preparing to go to the Middle East.  One of them—a young man who has recently lost his father—has bought a one-way ticket.  But his plans are complicated when his estranged sister returns home and makes it her mission to keep him there.

Twenty-five years ago, a motley group of friends met as kids at a summer camp where the head counselor secretly taught them their disabilities could be “cured” through the power of prayer. Today, the group has gathered to mourn the untimely passing of one of its members. Over the course of the night, old wounds are uncovered, friendships are tested and the truth surrounding their late friend becomes troublingly clear.

Alice and Connor sit by their roadside stand selling cheap fireworks while developers swallow the land around them. Promised a condo in the new development, their future is secure. Enter Marnie, Alice’s long lost granddaughter, proposing to buy the land to save her family legacy. Marnie and Alice will become reacquainted with each other’s deeply held secrets, uncertain pasts, and hopeful futures. Hunter, a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship recipient, explores the emotional frontiers of a family struggling to make a home in the vastness of the American landscape with affection, poignancy, and a profound sense of empathy.

Meet Jake, a descendant of the explorer William Clark, who has recently been diagnosed with Huntington’s disease and is searching for a way to use his degree in Post-Colonial Gender Studies to make a discernible contribution to society; and Chris, an aspiring writer and native of Lewiston. Against the backdrop of an increasingly corporatized and dehumanized American West, these two young men attempt to join together to forge ahead into an uncertain future. Leavened with humor and compassion, Clarkston juxtaposes day-to-day existence with historical allusions and larger themes of faith and doubt.

A Permanent Image introduces us to the members of an estranged family from small-town Idaho as they gather to bury the family patriarch just before Christmas. Siblings Bo and Ally arrive after years away to find that their mother has painted everything in the house——including magazines, calendars and the television——white. They worry about the mental health of their mother, but as the play unwinds, so too does the method behind her madness. Bo and Ally are suddenly faced with a reality that brings their already strained worlds crashing down. A Permanent Image paints a startling picture of the interrelations of a broken family, going far deeper. How do we cope when confronted with just how small our lives really are in the big picture?

Ten years ago in Lewiston, Idaho, Brent and Andy shared their secrets. Brent now drifts from one college town to the next, lecturing and playing reinventions of Beethoven's Pathétique. The story and the music shift in time across a decade, deconstructing the clichés of a “coming out” story and revealing how the boys' relationship caused Andy’'s father, Mark, to fulfill his own obsession.

Four years ago Bryan abandoned his labor of love, a newspaper for truckers. Now he'’s returned–—with no word of where he'’s been—–and things have changed. His former lover is filled with rage, his new coworker is filled with incessant adoration, and his paper is filled with personal ads. As he considers giving up for good, Bryan searches for what he couldn'’t find on the road: a way to keep faith in humanity.

A retirement home in northern Idaho is shutting down. Only three patients remain——and one of them is lost. Gerald, 91 and suffering from dementia, has wandered off, leaving his wife Etta and her friend Tom. Remaining staff includes a new 20-year-old cook and two longtime employees, women suddenly faced with a crisis of their own. In the midst of a record-breaking blizzard, the search for Gerald takes an unexpected turn—, as the others find themselves powerless in the face of an uncertain future. A tender and heartbreakingly funny new work by a playwright who has risen like a meteor on the theatrical scene.