synopsis

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The Sacrifice explores man's priorities in matters of love, family, friendship, and faith through a contemporary retelling of the biblical tale, “The Binding of Isaac.” The play revolves around the life of headstrong Claudia Hubbard-Thorne, a rising playwright, and her collaboration with her cocky co-writer and part-time dance instructor, Peter Clark. When the two playwrights begin writing the play using Claudia’s husband Richard, a Wall Street metals trader, as the inspiration for the leading character,  the playwrights unwittingly embark upon their own harrowing journey up Mount Moriah to confront the Abrahams in their own lives and the sacrifices demanded by them.

The play that they are writing is dramatized in cross-cut sequences throughout the main play, and Claudia, Peter, and Richard play all the roles in the play-within-the-play. This play-within-the-play depicts an ego-driven Wall Street metals trader who takes his unhappy teenage son on a weekend climbing trip, and serves both as a metaphor for parents "sacrificing" children and a mirror reflecting the scarred emotional landscape that stretches across Claudia and Peter's personal lives. The havoc wrought in writing and reenacting a play that cuts so close to the bone also contributes to the fragility of the collaboration itself. But by suffering the pain of the creative process and its fall-out, Claudia and Peter are finally able to move beyond their pasts and toward a more secure future together.  [2M;1F]