Unexpected complications arise when four sisters return to their childhood home for their younger brother’s funeral. They are amazed to discover that their shiftless, unmarried brother, who lived in a dilapidated house stuffed with worthless junk, amassed a fortune of more than $2 million.

Already torn between grief and the giddiness of an unexpected inheritance, the sisters learn that their brother created a trust that makes two of them rich and leaves the other two virtually nothing.

After a promise to share the inheritance more equitably breaks down, the sisters face a crisis that threatens to destroy their family. With the help of the husband of one of the sisters, an eccentric retired professor who may be losing his mind, and their son Byron, a devious ex-con art thief with a genius IQ, the sisters attempt to resolve the crisis.

Breaking the Trust is set in the living room of an older home in a small town in the Midwest during the winter of 2007.

Tara Lane Productions in association with City Theatre of Independence presented a reading of Breaking the Trust at the Westport Coffee House Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri on the evening of April 15, 2010. Jack McCord directed.

Cast

Marcie Ramirez, Linda Levin, Patricia McLaughlin, Mary Ruth Gunter, Bill Pelletier, Victor Hentzen.

Sample Pages of  Breaking the Trust 

Breaking the Trust won Rockhurst University’s Plays in Progress contest in 2008 and received a staged reading at the university.

*See the interview by Julie Schiedegger in the April 14, 2010 edition of the Blue Springs Journal.Q & A with Bill Rogers