End of the Trail

White men love to rewrite history. Gay men love to sleep around. And all men love to ignore their impending doom. So when multiple predictions for a global “Reset” converge on a single date, how better to spend the evening than by arguing with your best friend about whether you met online? “The End of the Trail” is part board game, part polemic, part plea… a savagely funny dissection of what motivates and distracts us. Kenny Shults and Sean Owens head this bi-polar parade of familial misconduct and sexual self-deception.

In a friendship spanning more than a decade and over 3,000 miles, Kenny Shults and Sean Owens have done nothing but talk about writing together. Nothing but talk. Shortly before Kenny's move to NY in '02, they took a trip to the Musee Mechanique, a repository of coin-operated wonders from SF's Playland-at-the-Beach, where they witnessed the majesty of "The End of the Trail," which changed their lives forever. Not necessarily for the better. In 2007, Kenny directed Sean in NAUGHT BUT PIRATES, with such helpful phrases as "Let me show you how to do that." Collaboration seemed imminent.

Cast and Crew

Kenny and Sean first had the idea to write End of the Trail together almost eight years ago. After finally agreeing whose name should get first billing, Kenny and Sean resumed their work and are delighted to premier End of the Trail at the 2009 FRIGID Festival.
Kenny and Sean have been close friends, colluders and collaborators for what feels like over a hundred years, and are just so pleased to be working together once again to present the long overdue End of the Trail.

Kenny Neal Shults is a native of New Orleans , Louisiana (Pre-Katrina), and currently lives and works in New York City . Kenny and Sean Owens met while both starring in The Duboce Triangle, a theatrical gay soap-opera serial in San Francisco ’s gone but not forgotten Josie’s Juice Joint and Cabaret. Kenny starred in numerous other San Francisco-based productions, including his own one man show, The Colon Chronicles, before he left for New York. Here, Kenny mostly does AIDS work – because it’s so lucrative - but most recently directed Sean Owens in the 2006 FRIGID Festival’s Naught But Pirates. That very show, coincidentally, also received the coveted FRIGID Audience Choice Award that year. Here’s what the reviewers had to say: “The director, Kenny Shults, seems comfortable with providing Owens with basic staging…”

Sean Owens is the Playwright-in-Residence for SF's EXIT Theatre, the City's "Best Comic Playwright" (SF Weekly) and the author of more than 30 plays, including past FRIGID entries, HER MAJESTY and NAUGHT BUT PIRATES (which won an Audience Choice Award in 2007). His autobiographical musical, GIRLESQUE (written with composer Don Seaver), has garnered awards and critical praise in SF, NY and Canada. As a performer, he most recently portrayed Oscar Wilde in Chris Jeffries' musical VERA WILDE and was seen by off-Broadway audiences as the Duchess Marlene in Liz Duffy Adams' WET. SF audiences also follow his improvised adventures as Cora Values, the hash-and-bull-slinging truck-stop hostess of the Gas & Gulp out on I-19. He is currently developing a new solo show, CENTER SQUARE, based on the life of Paul Lynde.