The Abundance
written by Chelsea Sutton
Awards
Semi-Finalist, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, 2024
Semi-Finalist, Terrence McNally New Play Incubator, Rattlestick Theater, 2024
Selection for Playlab, Valdez Theatre Conference, 2024
Shortlisted, Epiphanies Reading Series, Wild Imaginings (Waco, TX), 2024
Boston Court Writers Group 2024/2025
Synopsis
It’s vaguely the 1990s in the suburbs of Riverside, California, and Wendy, a broke young mom, has just moved to town. Lonely and under financial stress, Wendy is drawn to Tara Lee, her neighbor and boisterous personality who introduces Wendy to an amazing business opportunity – as a consultant for burgeoning multi-level marketing (MLM) company, SimpleLife.
As Wendy becomes more and more intertwined in the strange community of SimpleLife, the relief she finds in connecting with her neighbors slowly transforms into a waking nightmare. Wendy becomes more disconnected than ever, developing a complicated relationship to her VHS recruitment tape that teaches her sales techniques, tools to build her confidence, and how to recruit others to her team. Wendy’s reality warps in real time as she becomes more desperate to maintain her new social status and dig herself out of her worsening financial situation, losing her identity in the process. When her SimpleLife Tonic Bottle begins speaking and becomes her new best friend, Wendy thinks she has finally reached independence from the life she left behind – but the Tonic Bottle has other plans. As Wendy’s desperation and despair increase, Wendy must either claw her way to the top of the pyramid, or lose everything by leaving.
The Abundance explores how pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing (MLM) campaigns target lower-income communities, especially women.
Production History
2024 Reading, Kayenta Arts New Play Lab, dir. Carly DW Bones
2024 Reading, Valdez Theatre Conference, Last Frontier Theater
2023 Reading, dir. Daphnie Sicre; Moving Arts Theatre (Los Angeles), part of the MADLab Program
