MATAWAN
In the summer of 1916, a series of fatal shark attacks terrorized the New Jersey Shore. Further inland, a polio epidemic plagued Philadelphia, while the cloud of World War I loomed over the Nation. As the forces of nature, disease and war close in, characters who struggle to change must face a creature whose evolution has led to millions of years of survival. Spanning several cities, the infinite depths of the ocean and the point of view of the shark herself, Matawan examines how our internal anxieties are often just as terrifying as our national catastrophes.
PRESS
"Both Caffrey's script and Allison Shoemaker's atmospheric production for The Ruckus make clear that isolation and dislocation go hand-in-hand. No place seems safe...Matawan is an imaginative, smart and occasionally quite poignant look at people facing threats they never knew existed." Three stars —Kerry Reid, Chicago Tribune
"Monsters lurk in the deep, the play says. But, as Caffrey subtly points out, human beings harbor their own sharks, too." Recommended —Chloe Riley, Chicago Reader
"Big and pleasingly imaginative...triumphing with smarts and passion...Caffrey focuses his very pithy dialogue on victims, families, and friends, and not on attack details. He also gives the shark a voice bordering on sentience: hungry, enraged, and itself an outsider." Recommended —Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City Times
"Caffrey delivers a truly unique script...How often can a shark make you misty?" Recommended —John Accrocco, BUZZChicago
"As an exploration of the ways in which we can see deeper truths about mankind through the evocative story of an aquatic killer, [Matawan] truly has bite." —Andrew J. Friedenthal, Austin-American Statesman
"Monsters lurk in the deep, the play says. But, as Caffrey subtly points out, human beings harbor their own sharks, too." Recommended —Chloe Riley, Chicago Reader
"Big and pleasingly imaginative...triumphing with smarts and passion...Caffrey focuses his very pithy dialogue on victims, families, and friends, and not on attack details. He also gives the shark a voice bordering on sentience: hungry, enraged, and itself an outsider." Recommended —Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City Times
"Caffrey delivers a truly unique script...How often can a shark make you misty?" Recommended —John Accrocco, BUZZChicago
"As an exploration of the ways in which we can see deeper truths about mankind through the evocative story of an aquatic killer, [Matawan] truly has bite." —Andrew J. Friedenthal, Austin-American Statesman
PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
- Atlantic Acting School (October 2024) – Directed by Nicky Maggio
- The University of Texas at Austin (2018) – Directed by Lane Michael Stanley
- Nature Coast Technical High School (Spring Hill, FL, 2017) – Directed by Lori Erickson
- The Ruckus at the Athenaeum Theatre (Chicago, 2015) – Directed by Allison Shoemaker
- Finalist, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference (2013)
- Developed through Red Tape Theatre's Fresh Eyes Project in (Chicago, 2012) – Directed by Allison Shoemaker