“One of the most brilliant pieces of theatre I have ever seen… Tight and eloquent script. This is a play dedicated to drawing the audience in, making us laugh a bit uncomfortably and putting us on notice that there are issues to be discussed. It's about how liberal we, the audience, may think we are. It's about the discomfort of being faced with our own prejudices, no matter how hip and happening we may be.” — On Stage Los Angeles An encounter between a white, gay playwright and his black, straight "shirtless maid" goes disastrously wrong when signals are misinterpreted, lines crossed. Handjob explores the aftermath of their meeting, as it reveals deep layers of discrimination, discord, and discontent among people who should be allies. How can you know when you've gone too far if you completely ignore other people's boundaries? NOMINEE , LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards: Best Playwriting Play Details Handjob is a 90-minute play with no intermission. Cast: 2 female, 4 male Genre: dark comedy, dramedy, edgy, modern classic, dysfunction, new plays, subversive, provocative, radical, bold Keywords: LGBTQ, Race, Representation, Consent, Sex Work, Meta Theater, Philosophical Debate, Hot Topics, Culture Wars, Social Issues, Nudity, Intimacy Coordinator Character Breakdown EDDIE, 20s, black, handsome, fit. Straight. KEITH, 50s, white, a writer, disheveled. Gay. BRADLEY, 20s, white, beautiful, fit, confident. Fluid. KEVIN, 40s, white, a writer, disheveled. Gay. SUSAN, 30s, a woman of color, passionate. Queer. TREVOR, played by actor who plays Kevin. JEFFREY, played by actor who plays Bradley. KATE, 20s, a woman of color. Queer. " Handjob is one of those rare plays that manages to surprise and startle as much as entertain – and this is a profoundly good thing. … I won’t reveal the twists and turns...except to say that they’re ingeniously done, and unexpected. The audience is lulled into thinking it’s seeing one kind of play for the better part of an hour, only to be turned around and led on a merry chase for the rest of the production’s 90 or so minutes… I used the word 'ingenious' earlier, and I’ll repeat it here: Mr. Patterson has ingeniously structured the play, and written it with delight: it’s laugh-out-loud funny until it isn’t, and when it stops being funny, it confronts us with ideas we really should think about seriously… Imaginative and funny and outrageous and startling.” — The Los Angeles Post About the Author Erik Patterson 's plays include He Asked For It , Sick , One of the Nice Ones , Handjob , and I Wanna Hold Your Hand . His theater work has been produced or developed by Playwrights’ Arena, the Los Angeles Theatre Centre, Theatre of NOTE, the Evidence Room, The Actors’ Gang, the Echo Theater Company, the Lark Play Development Center, Moving Arts, Black Dahlia, Naked Angels, the Mark Taper Forum, and New Group. His plays have been nominated for the Ovation Award, the Stage Raw Award, the LA Weekly Award, and the GLAAD Media Award. His writing for TV has been recognized with the Humanitas Prize and the Writer's Guild Award, as well as two Emmy nominations. Along with his writing partner, Jessica Scott, Erik has written films for Warner Bros., Universal, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Freeform, MTV, Paramount, Hallmark, and Syfy, among others. Film and TV credits include: Abandoned (starring Emma Roberts and Michael Shannon), R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour , Another Cinderella Story (starring Selena Gomez and Jane Lynch), Deep Blue Sea 2 , Radio Rebel , and many more. Erik is a graduate of Occidental College and the British American Drama Academy. He hosts a gently-guided writing sprint online called “Sunday Sprints” that attract writers seeking community and inspiration to do their best work. Praise for Handjob "Erik Patterson's play Handjob does indeed include a handjob. So if you're the kind of person who might be offended by that or by male frontal nudity then this play might, oddly, be perfect for you... I don't want to give too much away here because the mechanics of the play, like a whodunnit, depend on audience surprise. Our playwright masterfully plays on what the audience knows, maybe even what they are thinking, and certainly how charged that male nudity is. So a play that's about a handjob, and a little sex work side hustle, becomes about a lot more. Suddenly we're dealing with questions of race and representation and consent and writer's privilege and normalizing gay stories and gun violence. And rather than feeling like it's all a forced mess, it feels like the conversations we need to be having. Erik Patterson is an LA playwright who delights in shocking audiences by pressing against our taboos or prejudices. In some of his earlier plays this passion felt a little clumsy. A bit like an artist who was saying 'I see the world this way and I'm going to shock you with that and I don't care what you think!' The plays had the vitality of a rebellious teenage