Training Wisteria

Training Wisteria is the story of a contemporary American family in shambles after a recent divorce. As Lynn and her teenage son, Dylan, prepare for his high-school graduation party, the rest of the family orbits and descends upon the house. Rachel, home from the Ivy League and disillusioned by the absence of her father, Stephen, takes on Lynn's broken heart, Dylan's self-abuse and the world. Kacie, only 13, struggles to balance her loyalty to her siblings with a false hope that her father will come home. Lynn tends to the back yard, digging up its decaying compost pile and cultivating a tree that won't be trained. When Stephen shows up for his weekly visitation with Kacie, the thin veneer of civility among him and his children quickly evaporates. Underneath Stephen and Kacie's conversation about mathematics and No. 2 pencils are their pleas: his that she accept his choices, hers that he come to Dylan's graduation. Meanwhile, Dylan, in between beers, systematically destroys the yard, its shed and himself. Face to face with her ex-husband and her son's self-destruction, Lynn is forced to reassess the concepts of family, love and change. Only she can save her children from going the way of the yard. A funny, intimate look at the reality of divorce, Training Wisteria is the winner of the Kennedy Center National Student Playwriting Award, the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award and the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award. Mild violence.