Freedom of Speech

A true story, Eliza Jane Schneider’s twenty-five character solo play, Freedom of Speech, will take the audience on her journey through the kitchenettes and hearts of Arizona polygamists, Los Angeles dominatrixes and Montana Huterites, and into the real social emergencies facing America as a nation. Arkansas fiddles, Pittsburgh street rap and New Orleans midnight arias provide the soundtrack to Schneider’s 317,000-mile spiritual quest, born of her hypothesis that dialects—residual phonemes– are the only archeological dig the kids of America have. What began as a World Arts and Cultures thesis project at UCLA and evolved through various cocoons as Road Trip and USA 911 emerges as a jarring sociopolitical manifesto, Freedom of Speech.