FernFolio

Early one July morning, a seventeen-year old girl named Del Thigpin sneaks out of the home of her foster parents, and down the street to where she has parked her 1983 Datsun, purchased secretly with the money she’s earned working at a video store.  After staging her own death from drowning at a nearby beach, she begins her journey into a new life as Elena Franco.
With a six-month supply of food, camping gear, and 134 dollars, Del plans to drive to Arizona, camp near a small town, and get a job to support herself.  Though frightened, at times, by her complete lack of family or friends, and uncertain about the future, Del is determined to leave behind the endless foster homes and social workers, and the cynical, mouthy and defensive young woman she has become to survive the circumstances of her life.  Adapting regularly to new foster parents and siblings, and new schools, has taught Del to keep her thoughts to herself, lie with creativity, and become whoever she needs to be in order to get by.  It has also made her a reader, and a lover of old movies, especially French and Italian films, and she has cobbled together a convincing set of stories about her part Italian family from her reading and viewing.  Del is also an observer of others, and has learned to mimic the behaviours of those around her as a way of entering into, in effect, borrowing, their lives.
On that July day, Del plans to get as far from Los Angeles as she can before her foster mother reports her missing, but a serious collision on the Santa Monica freeway stops traffic for hours, and she, and all of her fellow travellers, find themselves stranded in their vehicles.
Breakout is the story of that traffic jam, and what happens to Del and the others stuck on the freeway that day.  It is also the script for Elena Franco’s one-woman show about a day-long traffic jam on the San Diego freeway, that opens in Denver eight years after Del stages her escape from L.A.  Written by Paul Fleischman, it explores people’s obsession with running away from themselves and what happens when, for one day, they are forced to stop and confront that face in the rear-view mirror.  Fleischman’s insights into the human psyche, as represented first and foremost by Del and her alter ego Elena, are both tender and searing.
FernFolio Editor