David T. Little’s Dog Days

Understudies: Elio Bucky (Howard), Kelsey Sandefur (Mother), Megan Fleischmann (Lisa), Ilana Starr (Captain)

As war raged, America slowly fell into chaos. Roads became blocked except for military use, factories and schools closed one by one, electric power faded by flicker and blackout, and gas lines finally choked off. Neighbors began to vanish, sometimes mysteriously. A family of five—parents, two sons, and a young daughter Lisa—must now do what they can to survive. They live off government rations; the father hunts every day, but returns empty-handed as all the animals are gone.

A homeless man shows up on their doorstep. He wears a self-made dog costume and truly believes he is a dog. Skeptical at first, Lisa befriends him and names him Prince. Lisa's mother supports the friendship, but her father is repulsed. Prince provides an escape for Lisa, and relief from her grief over losing her friend Marjorie, who moved away.

As government rations slow to a stop, conditions continue to worsen. The family turns to eating grass from the yard. But winter soon comes and the grip of starvation takes hold.

I believe that it is an artist's duty to ask questions: in particular, questions that can be hard to hear, and difficult or even impossible to answer. Dog Days pursues exactly that goal, exploring the nature of choice and consequences, the unspoken truth of what we become upon the dissolution of civilization, and what it truly means to be human. Based on a short story of the same name by Judy Budnitz, Dog Days is told predominantly from the perspective of Lisa, a 13-year-old girl whose world slowly falls apart. We watch as her family slowly starves: as her mother gives up on life, her father struggles to fulfill the myth of the provider, and her brothers attempt to escape their boredom through an assortment of increasingly antisocial activities. When we meet Prince—a man in a homemade dog costume, begging for food, and truly seeming to believe he is a dog—his presence introduces unsettling questions about the nature of humanity. It has been said that a society can be judged by the way it treats its animals. It also stands to reason that you can tell a lot about a person by how long they can remain truly human during the most traumatic of times. Dog Days explores the ultimate struggle of humanity, stuck between the dispassionate gaze of nature and the often violent artifices of society.

—David T. Little

Our long-held traditions, daily rituals, and codified laws provide the structure for our society and framework of our culture. They ground us and offer a sense of security. But how resilient is this structure, and for how long can it hold under the most dire of circumstances? Can we maintain our humanity, or will the fabric of civilization rip to reveal it has been an illusion? The lens of survival shows us the true nature of sacrifice—whether ritual, offering, resignation, or incarnation. And asks if the human animal instinct can be transcended.

—Joachim Schamberger