Keep The Change

To be performed in a staged reading, Kyle Mazer’s senior thesis, Keep The Change is a play that follows three individuals in different generations of a New Jersey Deli as they embark on the year that was 2020. In their own difficult and confusing ways, an influencer looking to understand her world, a deli-owner looking to better his business, and an old man looking to cherish all he has left, get confronted with the beast that is COVID-19 and must reckon with how it changes the ways they see themselves, and those around them. At the heart of this play is the ultimate question of who, as individuals, are we really supposed to serve? Is it ourselves? Is it our families? Is it our worlds, if such thing even exists? Other than providing some deep-rooted sandwich philosophies, Keep the Change hopes to capture the real people during a wild time in our history, many of whom will get glossed over by numbers, and forgotten in our textbooks. We were something else during those “trying times.” Hopefully, through this play, we’ll have a slightly better understanding of what that something was, or at least, how we can go forward from it.