About The Show
The Save, written and performed by Jack Merrill, is a coming-of-age in the 1970’s One-Man-Show that unapologetically takes on the scaring abuse often lurking beneath the pristine exterior of American Success.
Jack comes from a family sporting a hard won, enviable-seeming life in prosperous Evanston, Illinois. A world depicted in classic American films from The Breakfast Club to Mean Girls and Ordinary People. Unlike his suicidal sister, Jack manages to flee his abusive homelife after getting in a fistfight with his “Chicago Famous” father on Christmas Eve. Through the support of his friends “The Coolest of the Cool” and his boyfriend, a boyfriend he was not only not ashamed of back in the late 1970’s, but loved deeply, he finishes high school after being housed by a heroic family, then leaves Evanston behind, diving headfirst while still a teenager into Chicago’s late-night exploding Disco scene.
Without support or much guidance, he falls in with a clubby older crowd and gets in a car with notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy who abducts and rapes him. He escapes, employing lessons learned surviving his childhood and now 45 years later, Jack is ready to tell his story.
Directed by Michael Engler
Produced by Michelle Campbell Mason
