Meet Sam, a young woman facing a fork in the road at the end of her senior year of
high school. When she loses her friend Kelly in a tragic car accident, she’s forced to
decide for herself: does she do what her overbearing mother has decided is best
for her? Does she follow in the steps of her free-spirited friend? What about her

high school sweetheart? With a soaring indie-rock score, this ensemble

musical will prove that the road ahead may not be smooth, but it is worth every mile.

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The inspiration for the title “The Mad Ones” comes from an excerpt in the seminal Beat-Generation work On The Road by Jack Kerouac. The character Sam quotes it in the show, so I’ll refrain from putting it here. Like so many young men before me, discovering On The Road in my teens had a profound effect on my risk-taking. Reading of these young men, criss-crossing the United States in search of the pure and profound, encouraged me to take a lot of leaps in my own life. The world was an open road to be traveled and experienced. Only later did I see what a masculine lens Kerouac puts on travel and adventure. We give permission to our young men to not know, to kick around and experience the world before “settling down,” but withhold that permission from women experiencing the same moment in their lives. The character of Beverly puts this into stark contrast, singing that a young man on the road can be seen as a rebel, where a young woman in the same circumstances will be judged as “running scared.” The margin of error for a woman in search of meaning is frighteningly small.

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