Finalist in the Hippodrome’s 2022 New Works Festival, Gearhart’s new play explores life after the Iraq war for two men who  ultimately try to muster the strength to march on and repair their broken lives.

Knight is an Army Reserve Soldier well past his prime. He is sent to a desolate base in Wisconsin for a month of annual training. To him it’s easy money, and he sure can use it. But upon reporting Knight fails his Army ‘fat test’. Now he must lose some weight quickly or else lose his rank and be sent home. While brooding and drinking in his motel room he meets an Iraqi native, Ahmad, who is the motel maintenance man (at least that’s what his uniform says). Ahmad doesn’t seem to know how to fix anything, much less the broken heat in Knight’s room, and he admittedly would rather be working on his ‘grand philosophical treatise’. Over the next ten days these two men will try to make sense of why they’ve been brought together, discuss some painful questions about the past, and ultimately try to muster the strength to march on and repair their broken lives.