Samuel D. Hunter In Five Plays 

A recipient of a Drama Desk Award, an Obie and the MacArthur Fellowship — also known as the “genius grant” — Samuel D. Hunter is a brilliant and widely produced playwright whose works are largely set in his home state of Idaho. Hunter is known for using humor and compassion to bring to life the stories of characters facing situations of social withdrawal. Seclusion and loneliness are a thread found in many of Hunter’s plays, including The Whale, perhaps his most known work, whose film adaptation won an Academy Award for the lead performance of Brendan Fraser.

Here’s a sampling of five of Hunter’s celebrated plays, each of which explores an engrossing and riveting life situation.

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A Bright New Boise (US/UK)

In this dark comedy, Hunter introduces five people who seek meaning in their everyday lives through human connection. Shaped by Hunter’s deep interest in religion, the play takes place primarily in the bleak corporate break room of a Hobby Lobby craft store in Idaho. Will, who has fled his rural hometown after a scandal at his Evangelical church, comes to the Hobby Lobby not only for employment but also to rekindle a relationship with Alex, his brooding teenage son, whom he gave up for adoption several years ago. Hunter presents Will as an individual trying desperately to make things right with his son. Alex works at the store along with Leroy, his adopted brother and protector, and Anna, a hapless young woman who reads bland fiction with hopes for dramatic endings. As their manager, the foul-mouthed Pauline, tries ceaselessly to find order (and profit) in the chaos of a small business, these lost souls confront an unyielding world through the beige-tinted impossibility of modern faith.

A Bright New Boise is the work that kickstarted Hunter’s career; the play was commissioned and first produced by Partial Comfort Productions and directed by Davis McCallum at the wild project in New York City in September of 2010. The production won Hunter a 2011 Obie Award for Playwriting. Later that year, John Vreeke directed a second staging at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC.

A Case for the Existence of God (US/UK)

This heartbreaking drama explores the dynamics of friendship between two men and the challenges of achieving “normal” middle-class American goals. A Case for the Existence of God unfolds in the cramped, uncomfortable setting of a small-town office. Keith, a mortgage broker, and Ryan, a yogurt plant worker who hopes to buy a plot of land that belonged to his family many decades ago, realize they share a specific kind of sadness. Their conversation about obtaining a loan opens into a discussion about the chokehold of financial insecurity. While pondering the dynamics of the father-child relationship, the men bond over the precariousness of parenthood. With humor, empathy and wrenching honesty, Hunter commingles two lives and deftly bridges disparate experiences of marginality.

A Case for the Existence of God premiered off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in April 2022. Directed by David Cromer, the two-person cast featured Kyle Beltran as Keith and Will Brill as Ryan. The play was recognized in 2022 as the winner of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle’s Award for Best Play.

Little Bear Ridge Road (US/UK)

In Little Bear Ridge Road, Hunter brought his bitterly funny and incisively thoughtful writing to Broadway. In it, a reclusive aunt and her gay nephew reunite to sort the mess left after a troubled father’s passing in rural Idaho. They face an uncomfortable and universal question: How do we deal with other people? And is connection more trouble than it’s worth? As their relationship begins anew, the two reluctant Fernsbys – separated by age and experience – start to understand the joys and perils of letting someone else into your own story, even if only for a moment.

Little Bear Ridge Road premiered on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on October 30, 2025 after a world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, IL, one year earlier, on June 13, 2024. Directed by Joe Mantello, the Broadway production featured Laurie Metcalf, Micah Stock, John Drea and Meighan Gerachis. The Hollywood Reporter called the show “a jewel of a play” and “deceptively modest” as well as “a singularly beautiful piece that shifts almost imperceptibly from acerbic comedy to searing pathos before an ending whose bleakness is broken by a slender but luminous beam of hope… Unassuming and concise but emotionally expansive, attentive to its characters’ interior lives as much as their quotidian routines… its rewards are as immense as the Idaho night skies.”

Pocatello (US/UK)

In Pocatello, Hunter reflects on his own childhood and how much he loved the warm feeling of family when visiting a chain restaurant. The play began as a writing exercise for Hunter but developed into a celebrated full-length comic drama. As the play unfolds, audiences meet Eddie, who manages an Italian restaurant in a small, unexceptional American city that is slowly being paved over with strip malls and franchises. But Eddie is struggling with personal challenges and can’t serve enough soup, salad and breadsticks to make his hometown feel like home. Set against the harsh backdrop of Idaho, this heartbreaking comedy is a cry for connection in an increasingly lonely American landscape. 

Pocatello was first seen off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in November 2014. Davis McCallum helmed the production, which starred T.R. Knight as Eddie and featured Jessica Dickey, Crystal Finn, Jonathan Hogan, Brian Hutchinson, Leah Karpel, Cameron Scoggins, Brenda Wehle, Danny Wolohan and Elvy Yost. Time Out New York wrote, “Skillful and moving, humanely rendered and shrewdly structured, Hunter’s writing achieves a new level of technical complexity and strikes keen, ringing notes.”

The Whale (US/UK)

Hunter sees The Whale as an examination and exploration of self-worth. On the outskirts of Mormon Country, Idaho, a 600-pound reclusive college professor hides away in his home and slowly eats himself to death. Charlie is in a never-ending situation, lonely and unable to move around. With no insurance for his care, his reality seems unsolvable. Desperate to reconnect with his long-estranged daughter, he reaches out to her, only to find that she is a viciously sharp-tongued, wildly unhappy teen. Big-hearted and fiercely funny, The Whale tells the story of a man’s last chance at redemption and finding beauty in the most unexpected of places. 

The Whale was developed in part at the Denver Center Theatre Company’s 2011 New Play Summit. The play had its world premiere at the Ricketson Theatre in Denver, presented by the Denver Center Theater Company in January 2012 under the direction of Hal Brooks. The play was then presented off-Broadway by Playwrights Horizons in October of 2012, directed by Davis McCullum. 

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Notably excluded from this list are the following plays:

• A Great Wilderness (US/UK)
• A Permanent Image (US/UK)
• Clarkston (US/UK)
• Grangeville (US/UK)
• Greater Clements (US/UK)
• Lewiston (US/UK)
• Lewiston/Clarkston (US/UK)
• Rest (US/UK)
• The Few (US/UK)
• The Healing (US/UK)
• The Harvest (US/UK)

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For more great plays by Samuel D. Hunter, visit Concord Theatricals in the US or UK.