Non Theater Script

Kentucky Route Zero: Video Game Adaptation

Venue: The Met Opera House, NY

Kentucky Route Zero is a Steam Game by Cardboard Computer, released in 2013. It is a magical realist adventure game that follows a deliveryman named Conway as he travels a mysterious underground highway in Kentucky to complete his final delivery. Blending surreal visuals, haunting music, and lyrical dialogue, the game explores themes of debt, memory, and the lives of forgotten working-class Americans. It unfolds across five acts, immersing players in a dreamlike journey through ghost towns, bureaucratic labyrinths, and poetic encounters.

This project follows Conway, on his final journey to 5 Dogwood Drive via the surreal Route Zero. Haunted by guilt, addiction, and debt, Conway becomes a symbol of those crushed by capitalism and forgotten by progress. Along the way, he is joined by outsiders—Shannon, Ezra, Junebug, Johnny—each seeking identity, justice, or home in a collapsing world. As Conway succumbs to the weight of debt, he passes on the mission to his companions, who become witnesses to history, grief, and resilience.

Set against a decaying Appalachian backdrop, the piece reimagines Route Zero as a liminal space where debt becomes a visible force, and characters confront the consequences of loss, erasure, and transformation. Inspired by The Lost Weekend and Frankenstein, the play explores addiction, memory, and the Romantic terror of a body animated but hollowed by invisible systems of control.

In this journey we as an audience become a witness to the fight of the underprivileged: how they accept loss, remember history, grieve the erasure.

The Hidden Hand: Dime Nobel Series Adaptation

The Hidden Hand is a 19th-century dime novel by E.D.E.N. Southworth. Opening the era of genre literature, the novel features Capitola, a bold and rebellious orphan who outwits villains and defies gender norms. Blending melodrama, mystery, and action, the novel critiques social injustice while delivering fast-paced thrills.

This adaptation happens in a mobile theater under the Bridge in Brooklyn. Surrounded by graffiti evoking Native American imagery, I reimagined E.D.E.N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand as a haunting reflection on land, legacy, and resistance. Capitola’s improbable survival and triumph are no longer just the result of wit and luck—they are shaped by unseen forces: the spectral presence of displaced Native ancestors who act as guardians against those seeking to seize her inherited home. In this version, the “hidden hand” becomes a metaphor for indigenous histories buried beneath American property myths—haunting the land, intervening in fate, and reclaiming forgotten ownership through acts of quiet resistance. By staging this tale in a reclaimed urban space, the production foregrounds the contested nature of territory and questions who truly holds the right to call a place home.