←Recommendations of Stay Up and Keep Rolling

This moving and refreshing drama focuses on long-haul truckers and the people who love them -- their interpersonal conflicts, economic pressures, culture clashes, and ever-present dangers...but also their joys, their humor, and the callings they feel drawn to for more ineffable reasons than money. Max Gill beautifully draws us into these lives, creating full-blooded characters who might defy your expectations. (Did you know about the boom in Sikh truckers? You do now.) There's a lot to think about here -- about how we get the things we depend on, who's doing that work, and what it costs them.

Premiere Stages, the professional Equity theatre in residence at Kean University, is pleased to recognize STAY UP AND KEEP ROLLING as a semi-finalist for the 2023 Premiere Play Festival. “STAY UP….” rose through a competitive selection process conducted by Premiere staff and a panel of outside theatre professionals to become one of 40 semifinalists out of 700 submissions. The panel was impressed by the specific, compelling characters and their hustle to survive. The exploration of the effects of capitalism, represented in the grueling lives and diverse conflicts of the three truckers, was deftly done. Our congratulations and thanks to Maximillian.

A play of intense humanity and tension. One that's just as comfortable keeping you on the edge of your seat as it is allowing you to sit with its characters in a diner and hang out. Too often we look to the squabbles between politicians, celebrities, news anchors, to understand our politic landscape. This play returns us to the soil — to one of the most overlooked bastions of the working class, the truckers. How are we supposed to overcome our differences when we're not being paid enough, forced to drive all night... better pull over before something happens.

Every industry has been plagued by our current bout of unsustainable, late-stage capitalism. Gill's play is a troubling, keening mosaic of three truckers, some veteran, some rookie, all caught up in the vortex. It's an enlightening reminder that at the bottom rung of everything, are people. People with hopes, dreams, aspirations, and faults, just trying to survive in systems that don't particularly care if they do. It's brutal, moving, and heartbreaking, and if anyone is going to make it, it's because of the people willing to stay up with us.