Hummingbird in the House

(3 men, 2 women, 1 flexible, unit set)

 

Thomas and Judie Springer are a typical Midwestern American couple in their early thirties. They have typical conservative values which include God, guns and trucks. At the same time, they have an infestation of hummingbirds in the house. They keep getting in and then breaking their little necks on the front room picture window as they try to get out.

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A gentle creature floats into the lives of these two fairly hardened individuals. She’s Thomas’ niece. His estranged brother’s daughter. Estranged because Thomas’ brother Lucas is a “flaming liberal” as Thomas calls him. But Violet is quite different than the last time he saw her. She’s fifteen and goes by Vince now. Lucas threw her out and she hopped a bus to her only relative…her uncle Thomas. Her very conservative Uncle Thomas.

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Characters

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JUDIE SPRINGER (32) Wife of THOMAS. She’s a high school graduate but never went on to more. She and Thomas married right out of high school and she’s been working minimum wage jobs ever since. She’s stuck in a lower middle-class lifestyle but she has the potential for more. Her conservatism is more THOMAS’s than hers. She espouses it to keep the peace.

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THOMAS SPRINGER (33) Husband to JUDIE and brother to LUCAS SPRINGER. Uncle to VINCE/VIOLET SPRINGER. He’s a pretty staunch conservative and, as a result, has broken any relationship he might have had with his brother, a “flaming liberal” as he describes him. He works construction twelve hours a day and is always exhausted. It seems to be what this couple has to look forward to…work, sleep, and repeat. It’s beginning to wear on them.

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VINCE/VIOLET SPRINGER (15) Daughter of LUCAS SPRINGER but transitioning to male. She is more than just that, but that is what she is seen as by both her father and her uncle.

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LUCAS SPRINGER (36) THOMAS’s older brother. He’s a therapist, father of VINCE/VIOLET and pretty liberal, but he’s confused about his daughter’s desire (as he sees it) to change genders.

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PETE (50’s) THOMAS’s co-worker on the high steel. He’s older and a bit of mentor to THOMAS.

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MADDIE (17) VINCE/VIOLET’s girlfriend. Very cool with the switch as most young people are in 2023.