Untitled Raccoon Play by SMJ

Directed by Nick Hatcher

Every year, the Danville, OH Lions Club hosts the annual Danville Lions Club Raccoon Dinner, the hugest fundraiser in town. However, it's 2022 and the 79th Annual Raccoon Dinner is on the chopping block due to rising COVID rates, a missing member, #liberalsnowflakes, deficient funds, and a lack of cooperative raccoons. But now an ominous warning from QAnon has one member ready to defend their club… at all costs. Meanwhile, the Danville, OH Raccoon Club is facing an uproar following dubious election results leading up to the 79th Annual Raccoon Dinner. A satire of young, queer conservatism in small-town Ohio, whiteness, anti-vaxxers, and the American Dream, Untitled Raccoon Play ends where it begins: with six people trapped in their mother's house, scared shitless.

This was the first piece I produced outside of undergrad, and was a developmental reading for SMJ as a part of their Dramatist Guild fellowship. We held the reading at the Hamilton Family Center at the Arden with the goal of getting eyes on SMJ’s work and try to get a larger theater to pick it up. It was, and unfortunately still is, a very timely piece that we all need to hear.