THE ACCIDENT BEAR

full-length comedy
2m, 1f

Bear has accidents. One a month, every month, without fail. Fender benders, broken ankles, a busted this or that - abrasions, lacerations, punctures, a broken heart. Try as he might, he can’t shake the accident bug until Chance, an unemployed paramedic living in her 1978 Volkswagen Beetle, wanders into his lonely world.

 

"Bartlett gives us a funny and provocative show involving three people: the dour, accident-prone Bear who owns the laundromat, Chance, who is either a late-night customer or his lover, or both, and Buddy, the worst best friend ever ... a play (at least in part) about the persistent wrongness of memory." - DC Theatre Scene, Five Stars

"Bartlett’s script has a technical sophistication. He tells this story in layers, withholding and revealing information with precision and skill, ratcheting up tension with each iteration of the story." - DC Theatre Scene, Five Stars

“The Accident Bear is an unusual play, staged in an even more unusual location ... a funny, yet touching play about relationships that uses memory in a way reminiscent of Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. As a bonus, it is performed in the place that inspired it and where it was written, a small space that allows for a powerful intimacy between the actors and the audience." - DC Metro Theatre Arts

"Bartlett’s play is a comic, quirky and heartfelt paean to quirky, comic, yet ultimately heartwarming people. It is so involving, and so well-acted, that the trappings of the laundromat — the rows of washers and dryers, the old candy machine, the faded signs — soon become part of the story itself, putting the audience front and center emotionally as well as physically." - The Bay Weekly

"You can smell the lint in the air. You feel the cold air sweep in on the entrances and exits ... using the Laundromat as a theatre is unusual, but not without precedent. From the Greeks congregating on hilltops to medieval troupes who performed from the back of wagons to the concept of the whole theatre developed in the 1970s by Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, who thought the actual theatre should become part of the set, thespians have performed for audiences in many unique settings." - Maryland Theatre Guide