Sender: A Play

Ike Holter’s Sender thrives on the contrast between order and chaos and the tensions that emerge as we leave childhood and adolescence behind to contend with the demands of adulting. In this comedy, Holter presents us with four millennial friends wrestling with these issues. While each is at a different stage of growing up, one of the friends has disappeared and has been presumed dead. Yet, at the beginning of the play, he returns and completely upends the balance established in his absence. This witty, foul mouthed, and razor-sharp play asks: What does growing up mean … and is it even desired in this day and age?

Sender is one of seven plays in Holter’s Rightlynd Saga, all to be published by Northwestern University Press. Modeled on August Wilson’s iconic series exploring African American life in Pittsburgh, Holter’s plays are set in Chicago’s fictional fifty-first ward. The other plays in the cycle are Exit Strategy, Lottery Day, Prowess, Red Rex, Rightlynd, and The Wolf at the End of the Block.