Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment provides the underlying theme for Free Shot, a play exploring the idea of whether the human conscience will allow an individual who commits a criminal act to live in peace with himself, even if the crime goes unpunished by the state. Specifically, Free Shot examines what happens when young, irresponsible and unformed lives get tangled in an act of violence that is never addressed by its perpetrator or victim. The plot unfolds in and around the home of Dr. Kate Alexander and her daughter Lauren in Los Angeles. Lauren was raised believing her father died before her birth in an auto accident. His legacy is that he was a gifted athlete, a trait carried on in Lauren’s athletic prowess and demonstrated by the fact that she is the most sought after shooting guard in the country. Lauren has a great guy pal and a terrific life ahead of her – if only her over-protective mother would back off. Kate is complex and anxiety ridden; she packs heat and carries a secret so debilitating she seeks psychiatric counsel. Their lives are changed forever when Aaron Kingsley, former NBA All-Star and now coach and AD at a college recruiting Lauren, appears at their door. Kingsley, unaware that Lauren is his daughter, is in LA to persuade her to come east and play for him. However, instead of a star recruit, Kingsley gets a bullet in his gut. An LAPD detective gets involved, personally and professionally, as he uncovers the truth behind Kate’s assault on Coach Kingsley. But it is Lauren who must make things right, even if it means risking everything on a single free shot. David W. Christner was born in Sweetwater, Tennessee and raised in rural Oklahoma. He attended high school in Mountain View, a small farming community situated between the Washita River and the Wichita Mountains in the southwestern part of the state. As a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Navy, Christner served three years at sea fighting the Vietnam War and two years ashore in Norfolk, VA. After completing his graduate education at the University of Oklahoma, Christner settled in southern Rhode Island and for more than two decades worked as a technical writer, editor and multimedia training developer for a variety of defense contractors and hi-tech multinational corporations during the day and wrote plays and novels at night. His stage plays The Wall, Bui-Doi: The Dust of Life, The Walk, Red Hot Mamas, The Babe, The Bard and the Baron, The Bitch of Baily's Beach, Ezra and Evil, What About Mimi?, and This Blood's For You have been finalists or winners in national/international playwriting competitions. Speculations on the cosmos, sex, war, religion, injustice, environmental exploitation, aging, women's issues, the homeless, the colonial slave trade and capital punishment have formed the thematic content of the plays and novels he has written so far. His plays have been produced in the U.S. Australia, Japan, Belgium, India, Italy and Canada. An Italian translation of Red Hot Mamas by Leonardo Franchini opened in Trento, Italy in 2016. Victor Weber's Russian translation premiers in Tula, Russia in May. Christner is theater critic for the Newport Mercury in Newport, RI. Free Shot is one of his 19 full-length plays.