October 26^th-November 18^th

The premise is intriguing...the performances are vivid and unswerving in their commitment...The overall feeling of seeing the play is highly satisfying. Moreover, the development of local playwrights is critically important to the health of our theater scene, and in Appleton we have a promising and forceful voice. - Tony Chase - Artvoice

Actor Dan Walker donates a magnificent performance of Hamilton Newhauser, giving the character crisp authenticity. Bob Grabowski gives an intense performance of Miller, giving him focused strength but avoiding caricature. - Willy Rogue-Donaldson - Night-Life (November 12, 2007)

Read Audience Feedback

Tell Us Your Thoughts

• Written by Eric Appleton
• Starring
  • John Joy
  • Dan Walker
  • Sue Toomey
  • Bonnie Jean Taylor
  • Dinash Lal
  • Bob Grabowski
  • Drew Derek
• Directed by Scott Behrend

homeland is first of Mr. Appleton’s plays to be performed in Western New York. homeland is the story of a veteran ghost hunter and his young apprentice enter a conservative Midwest community in search of the paranormal. Politics, sexuality, religion, and the unknown collide in this provocative, chilling, and moving new drama.

Eric Appleton, a native of Chicago, moved to Buffalo two years ago to become Niagara University’s assistant professor of set and lighting design. He holds an MFA in lighting design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Prior to moving to Buffalo, he worked as a freelance designer and technician in the not-for-profit theatre communities of Chicago and Milwaukee, teaching occasionally as an adjunct at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, IL, and a sometime guest artist at Lawrence University, in Appleton, WI. His design work in Buffalo includes the set for the Irish Classical’s A Man of No Importance, Road Less Traveled’s Buffalo Movie, and Aida at Artpark.

Appleton has placed in several writing competitions across the country including: The Hangar Theatre’s 2006 Lab Company Playwrighting Residencies, Ithaca, NY (finalist for his play Izzy’s Request) and Partial Comfort Productions’ 2004 National Playwrighting Competition, New York, NY (semifinalist for his play Alice Delmonico’s World Without End). He has had plays produced in Illinois (Chicago & Forest Park), Oklahoma (Tulsa), Massachusetts (Bilarica), and California (Sonora). His plays include: Iphigenia in Kingman, Lester’s Breakdown Suite, Badgered, Tiny Tales of Terror, This Tunnel, and The West is the Land of Pie.

homeland had its origin in the days shortly after the Department of Homeland Security was opened and the playwright suddenly discovered that he lived not in America, but in the homeland.  His country was no longer a place of refuge, no longer the New World, no longer a place to come to, and he felt this shift in nomenclature and meaning deserved some sort of response, especially since there was very little media response or criticism to something, which seemed of such momentous import.  Other aspects of the play came together with the discovery of the work of paranormal investigators Harry Price and Nandor Fodor, and a trip to Greencastle, Indiana, to work as a guest lighting designer at DePauw University.

Road Less Traveled Productions is very thankful for our media sponsor WBFO. This performance is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Production Photos

Click on the images to enlarge