FOMITE
SELF STORAGE is an absurd, four-character comedy in one 90-minute act. JERRY and PETRA are both renters in a public storage facility. Strangers to each other when they meet, their lives become entangled and increasingly
complicated when a mysterious figure, THE LODGER, arrives and begins to occupy a vacant storage unit near theirs. Soon, inexplicable, surreal events occur, threatening JERRY’s and PETRA’s composure and their senses of reality. Hoping to solve the mystery of THE LODGER, they turn for help to the
ineffectual caretaker, MARCUS, who is no help at all — who, in fact, is even more mysterious in his way than THE LODGER!
THE OCCUPANT — In this four-character, one-act play, JAMES has lost his employment as an adjunct professor of English after austerity measures have forced education cutbacks, leading to the loss of his house to foreclosure and subsequent auction. In a desperate, quixotic attempt to spare his beloved former home from imminent demolition, he defies the new owner — real estate developer GINA — and stages a sit-in protest by occupying the living room and refusing to leave. Who will prevail in this battle of wills and ideology? And, THE OCCUPANT asks, what will be won — and lost — in the end?
About the Author
A core member of Trinity Repertory Company’s resident ensemble, William Damkoehler has appeared in over a hundred productions, either in Trinity’s home in Providence, RI, or with the company on Broadway, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival in Scotland, in Boston, Philadelphia, or on the Straw Hat Summer Theater Circuit. As a theater educator, he was a senior lecturer at Rhode Island School Of Design, and has taught and directed at Rhode Island College. In addition to his playwriting, his non-fiction has been published in The Providence Journal-Bulletin and The New York Times. He currently lives in San Diego, with his wife, Cynthia Strickland — also retired from Trinity Rep’s acting ensemble.
