As Naked in the Kitchen opens, Psychologist Charlie Campbell, and his wife Beth, are packing their son Michael, off to his first day in college. The parents are a study in contrasts. Charlie, sitting reading the paper, is so calm that he seems passively aggressive. Beth is just the opposite. She’s checking lists offering advice worrying out loud. Their son Michael is torn between the apparent lack of emotion from his father and the smothering of his mother. The tension is leavened with a good bit of genuine humor along with a certain amount of edginess. With Michael dropped off at school, the tensions between Charlie and Beth escalate. Somehow the bonus in intimacy that Beth had expected with Michael’s departure isn’t happening. Old trauma and deep seated pains that were only hinted at in the opening scenes erupt as some surprising new events come to the surface. Back into what’s become a standoff with the parents comes Michael with a new friend from school, Kevin. Although he’s a fellow freshman Kevin does add a sophomoric but thoughtfully comic note of humanity to the tense situation.

Lynda Martens is an actor/director/playwright from Granton, Ontario who has been writing since 2007. Naked in the Kitchen is her first script. Starting out as a one-act play, it attracted attention and won awards for its real characters and natural dialogue. In 2009, Naked in the Kitchen was chosen by the Bloomington Playwright’s Project as the winner of the Reva Shiner Playwrighting competition. It received a development contract and a full production in Bloomington in November, 2009.

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