Publisher's Synopsis
This collection includes three full-length plays: CLEAN, FLOORSHOW: DOÑA SOL AND HER TRAINED DOG, and TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS. CLEAN: What would happen if you found that impossible love was indeed possible? And what would happen if two of these couples were a drag queen and a woman, and a priest and a boy? FLOORSHOW: DOÑA SOL AND HER TRAINED DOG: Reality and fantasy collide as a son, just out of a mental institution, and his mother, a former hooker, now a fortune teller, battle for the truth regarding the death of a daughter who may never have existed. TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS: When Papo, a tough-talking Puerto Rican hustler from the Bronx, meets Brian, a frightened young lawyer from the Midwest, Papo begins to glimpse the possibility of a romantic escape from his life on the streets. CLEAN "The forms of love that dare not speak their names are pretty scarce in this age of the tabloid talk shows. But that hasn't stopped Edwin Sanchez, a new playwright of tremendous emotional conviction ... How do you feel, for example, about a thirty year-old Roman Catholic priest in love with a ten-year-old boy? The relationship - which, it should probably be noted right away, is never consummated - is at the center of CLEAN ... Mr Sanchez is a wide-eyed, unregenerate romantic who uses what he describes as 'impossible' relationships to consider and celebrate the arbitrariness of love. In a sense, the play is like a contemporary MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in which the passion-drunk characters, rather than being sorted into socially acceptable pairs, learn to live in a world ruled by a blind Cupid. It is a theme Mr Sanchez explored in TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS, an unsettling drama about a doomed gay triangle ... He is, in other words, a playwright to watch closely." -Ben Brantley, The New York Times FLOORSHOW: DOÑA SOL AND HER TRAINED DOG "... ambitious. In its 90 minutes [FLOORSHOW] attempts to deal with a whole family's worth of problems - and not just any family but a broken family headed by a prostitute, Doña Sol, who is forced to practice her trade at home within earshot of her young, impressionable children, one of whom has been severely handicapped since birth." -Jack Helbig, Chicago Reader TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS "Playwright Edwin Sanchez makes a promising New York debut with TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS, a grim, streetwise and bracingly compassionate work ... he convinces with the honesty of his writing and a canny, thoughtful grasp of his trio of characters. The playwright does an especially effective job in penning the gray shades of his characters ..." -Greg Evans, Variety
