news | Wednesday January 29, 2025

Hot Off the Press! Feast Has Arrived!

It’s a new tale for this era of wildfires and the relentless appetite of consumerism! Feast by the award-winning playwright Guillermo Verdecchia has arrived at Talonbooks. Feast follows a comfortable North American family as they contend with compounding global crises and the end of things as we know them. Twenty-something daughter Isabel turns to activism. Her mother Julia fortifies their home in preparation. And her father Mark lets his increasingly extractive foodie cravings precipitate the family’s unravelling as he turns to super-competent, underemployed fixer and logistics genius Chukwuemeka Okonkwe for help satisfying his urge to consume more.

Here’s a sneak peek from Feast:

“EMEKA
There are many stories about it, probably none of them true. Some say
it was first organized by apostates at the end of the last millennium
… a festival in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah. Almost
certainly, it is simply a cabal of occultist foodies … in any case … the
Festum Consummacionem Seculi, my friend. The Feast at the End of
the World. You want in, Mzungu?

MARK
Ah … what is it, exactly?

EMEKA
A meal like no other.

MARK
Archie, I don’t think I should …
… I’m in treatment here and things are – I’m
making changes.

EMEKA
Excellent. This is such good news.

MARK
Yes. Thank you. I’m very glad.

EMEKA
So, it is appropriate to celebrate. A final meal, then? A grand finale.
Now that you are so much better and that your life is back on course.
Say goodbye to all that in grand style and then back to your life.

(Shift.)

MARK
I fly to Tunis. There’s a young guy waiting for me, and he’s going to
drive down the coast where I’ll catch a boat that will take me to the
island of Lampedusa. The guy says nothing for the entire drive, hours.
Maybe he doesn’t speak English. When we get to the port, he gives me a
dirty cloth bag with something heavy in it. A gun.”

Moving from North America to Beirut to Mombasa, with stops along the way at Starbucks, the Centre for Avant-Garde Geography, and a cave on the island of Lampedusa, Feast spans the globalized world and beyond, offering a wild, magic-realist take on the uncertainties and anxieties of the early twenty-first century. Order your copy here.