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House of Butterflies

In the 1920s, the solution to a cheaper better operating car was the invention of leaded gasoline.  This play follows what happens to workers on the production line of this highly toxic invention.  Franklin Mann is an immigrant worker in the factory (known as the House of Butterflies) who takes on new dangerous work in order to better provide for his close-knit family.  What happens to him  when chilling strange visits from the element Lead in the form of hallucinations lead backwards though time?  The audience travels the same journey as Mann while discovering just to what extent we are held to sanity by familial ties.  House of Butterflies explores the cost of innovation on society through the lens of one family’s disintegration.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

FRANKLIN MANN:               ~50 years old, ethyl factory worker.

RHEA:                                 ~53 years old, Frankie’s wife.

JUPE:                                  ~18 years old, Rhea and Frankie’s adopted son. 

PAT O’CONNER:                  ~47 years old, ethyl factory worker, friend of Frankie.

P. B. SATURNINO:                ~25 years old, Frankie’s visitor. 

JOHNNY O’CONNER:           ~23 years old, ethyl factory worker, Pat’s son.

Production History

The play has had two directed readings:

Loyola University Chicago

Seattle University