PLAY SUMMARY:

Walter Masterson’s home sits shadowed in the dark heart of a dense stand of trees, most of which he planted himself. Every year he and his late wife Helen, and his children Beth and Prince, now in their thirties, each gathered a few fall leaves and pressed them into a special scrapbook that he called the Book of Leaves. Each of them wrote a short passage about what had happened to them during the past year that they felt had affected them most. But this beloved family ritual ended when Helen died by her own hand. The family fell apart. Teenager Beth ran away to live with an aunt, vehemently refusing to return home. Over the years to follow, Walter spent more and more time tending to his private woodland, his dense garden of trees, hoping for a recovery of the happiness that had been. Then he learned that time was running short. He reached out to his estranged daughter one last time, asking that she consent to see him, desperate to know the reason for the rift between them. She did. Over a long weekend at Walter’s home her brother Prince and his girlfriend Sylvia, she and her husband Jack, will open the Book of Leaves and fill its final chapter. The wall of shadows will fall.

Join us on May 11, 2020 for the stage reading of Will Cooper’s play, “Book of Leaves” at the Moxie Theater in San Diego. Time to be determined. Please check back or call the theater.