Live Bait Theater - Missing Man

 

See the reviews for Missing Man below, a re-mount of our 2007 Fillet of Solo hit.

For more information about Missing Man, click here.


Playwright undergoes search for a 'Missing Man'

By Matthew Fagerholm, Columbia Chronicle
February 25, 2008

Three hundred motorcyclists blazed across America in the spring of 2001. But they weren’t the average group of easy riders. Each of them had served in Vietnam, and they were making their annual cross-country trek to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Yet on this particular trip was an unlikely passenger: 35-year-old Chicago playwright Mary Scruggs... Read more.

Theater: Missing Man

By Catey Sullivan, Windy City Times
February 6, 2008

Mary Scruggs has a wild and wholly, stranger-than-fiction tale to tell. Think about it: How many married ladies with elementary school-aged kids and clinical depression do you know who ditched the confines of soccer practice, PTA meetings and day job for a cross-country road trip with a few hundred hard-core bikers? We're not talking Schwinns here, but motorcycles—Roaring hogs and all the incumbent machismo gear: leather chaps, wraparound goggles and more moronically sexist jokes than you can shake a heavily tattooed fist at... Read more.

Theatre Review - Missing Man

By Christopher Piatt, TimeOut Chicago
January 31, 2008

As one-person shows go, you certainly could do worse than Mary Scruggs’s recounting of her cross-country motorcycle sojourn with 300 Vietnam vets who trekked to the Memorial Wall in D.C. The only woman in the pack (the male coworker who persuaded her to join the group chickened out), Scruggs found herself playing confidante and nursemaid to emotionally fragile leathernecks who, for all their light-packing lifestyle, dragged a lot of baggage behind them... Read more.

Missing Man - The Centerstage Review

By Sarah Terez Rosenblum, Centerstage Chicago
January 28, 2008

I'm not part of the target audience for "Missing Man." I'm not a veteran or a motorcyclist, nor am I touched when veteran motorcyclists show unexpected emotion. However, I found the play, if not pertinent, at least relatively pleasurable.

Performed at Live Bait Theater, this one-woman show tells of the cross-country motorcycle ride upon which the author, Mary Scruggs, and 300 Vietnam Vets embarked right before 9/11... Read more.

Critic's Choice: Missing Man

By Kerry Reid, Chicago Reader
August 17, 2007

"Usually women don't get on a motorcycle unless a man is involved," observes Mary Scruggs near the beginning of her travelogue about Run for the Wall, an annual pilgrimage by a group of Vietnam-vet bikers to the D.C. war memorial. She rode not for one man but the lot of them, to collect their stories for a documentary... Read more.

Theater: Missing Man

By Scott C. Morgan, Windy City Times
August 15, 2007

Quick! Someone call Ira Glass of Chicago Public Radio’s This America Life. The perfect subject for that radio program ( or possibly the Showtime cable TV version ) is now playing at Live Bait Theater. It’s Mary Scruggs’ Missing Man.

Better yet, go yourself immediately to hear this emotional and very funny show in person. It’s part of Live Bait’s 12th Annual Fillet of Solo Festival, so don’t expect much more than just Scruggs on stage by herself. Yet the imagery and tales she spins paint a rich picture of Americans nursing the wounds of war and personal loss... Read more.

Tip of the Week - Missing Man

By Nina Metz, New City Chicago
August 14, 2007

In the final installment of the 12th Annual Fillet of Solo Festival at Live Bait Theater, Mary Scruggs details her adventures and emotional upheavals on the back of a Harley during "Run for the Wall," the annual cross-country motorcycle pilgrimage to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C... Read more.