damkoehler

SELF STORAGE is an absurd, four-character comedy in one 90-minute act. JERRY and PETRA are both renters in a public storage facility. Strangers to each other when they meet, their lives become entangled and increasingly complicated when a mysterious figure, THE LODGER, arrives and begins to occupy a vacant storage unit near theirs. Soon, inexplicable, surreal events occur, threatening JERRY’s and PETRA’s composure and their senses of reality. Hoping to solve the mystery of THE LODGER, they turn for help to the ineffectual caretaker, MARCUS, who is no help at all - who, in fact, is even more mysterious in his way than THE LODGER!

In this four-character, one-act play, JAMES has lost his employment as an adjunct professor of English after austerity measures have forced education cutbacks, leading to the loss of his house to foreclosure and subsequent auction. In a desperate, quixotic attempt to spare his beloved former home from imminent demolition, he defies the new owner - real estate developer GINA - and stages a sit-in protest by occupying the living room and refusing to leave. Who will prevail in this battle of wills and ideology? And, THE OCCUPANT asks, what will be won - and lost - in the end?