Ali brought the newest version of her short play The Point, which was named one of the ‘Best Ten Minute Plays of 2022’ and published by Smith & Kraus, to the EST Playwrights Unit last week.
Supported by a cast of talented actors from EST/LA, Antaeus, and other local LA theater companies, Ali joined the cast, playing one of the Western Massachusetts denizens involved in the cover-up of a murder amongst a group of drug dealers, addicts, rich co-eds, and those just trying to survive.
The play’s theme tackles class warfare and the real financial divide between the haves and the have nots in North Hampton and Holyoke, MA. The area has been dubbed The Tofu Curtain – an imaginary line that separates the well-to-do bucolic college towns from the dangerous streets which host New England’s biggest heroin and fentanyl trade, as well as the highest teen pregnancy, STDs, arson, and murder rates.
It is also loosely based on a real murder case, in which a love triangle resulted in two friends beating the third to death.
MacLean, who grew up in affluent Newton, MA, met some characters like these when she was a teen, while working in Boston. The party point at The Chesterfield Gorge in The Point is modeled on a place in the woods where kids from several different towns would meet up.
More readings and performances to be announced soon.
ALI MacLEAN 