BOB is Born: In White Castle and On Stage

Meet Bob. Born in a White Castle bathroom on Valentine’s Day, Bob is immediately abandoned by his mother. Luckily, he is taken in by Jeanine, a White Castle employee who once opened a fortune cookie that told her she would be mother to a great man. Thus begins a most unconventional childhood, followed by an equally unconventional adulthood.

Bob is the star of BOB, a play by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb that will kick off SCR’s 2009-2010 NewSCRipts readings series at 7:30pm on Oct. 26.

This offbeat, epic story follows Bob over 50-plus years as he tries to fulfill his adopted mother’s dream for him. His quest takes him from job to job and town to town, always in search of a place where he belongs. Sometimes sad, sometimes funny, the play raises interesting questions about destiny, family and contentment. Happiness, Bob discovers, is elusive, but not out of reach.

The annual NewSCRipts series of three Monday evening play readings was launched in 1985 as a way to bring the audience into the process of creating new work. After each reading, audience members engage in lively exchanges with the playwright and become active participants in the play’s development, providing invaluable feedback for the writer. Plays selected for the NewSCRipts series have earned six Pulitzer Prize nominations, with Margaret Edson’s Wit winning the prize in 1999.

Nachtrieb is a San Francisco-based playwright whose works include boom, Hunter Gatherers, Colorado, T.I.C. (Trenchcoat In Common) and Multiplex. Hunter Gatherers received the 2007 American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Award for best new play to premiere outside of New York and the 2007 Will Glickman Prize for best new play in the Bay Area. He is a resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, San Francisco, and holds a degree in theater and biology from Brown and an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University.

SCR commissioned Nachtrieb to write BOB.

Tickets to the reading, which will take place Oct. 26 at 7:30pm on the Argyros Stage, are $12, and can be purchased online at www.scr.org, by phone at (714) 708-5555 or in person at the SCR box office.

Learn more about NewSCRipts.