What does it mean to take someone into your home? The Man in the Sukkah is a tale of intergenerational trauma, buried secrets, and questing for identity. Southern Gothic and secular Judaism collide on a former plantation in rural South Carolina where the woods have more ghosts than trees. When Harris and Elaine take in a troubled teenager, Aviva, as their foster daughter - Aviva rebels by insisting on living in the yard in a sukkah (a temporary hut with three walls used during the Jewish festival of Sukkot). The sudden appearance in Aviva's sukkah of a mysterious man from Elaine's past sends further tremors through their lives. With Aviva at stake, Elaine and Harris must confront a perilous question: can they overcome the downward pull of history and their troubled upbringings to become good parents?
The Man in the Sukkah
Cast:
AVIVA, 14. Incredibly bright, delusionally adult. A childhood sexual abuse survivor.
(Note: The actress playing Aviva should avoid at all possible costs playing the maudlin / depressed teenager. Aviva’s not.)
ELAINE, 39. An art therapist and new foster mother. Pragmatic. Constrained. She collects broken birds.
HARRIS, 40s. Elaine’s husband. A freelance carpenter. Legally color-blind. He is blinded by bright lights, but has incredible night vision. Both tender and rough.
NATE, 36. A drifter. Sometimes very human, sometimes unsettling. He carries himself with a tension and a stillness, as if he’s on the edge of a cliff.