[close] Del has spent 17 years bouncing among foster homes. Smart, sharp-tongued, a master mimic, she’s fed up with her world and with being Del. Faking her own death, she leaves both herself and L.A. behind — until her escape lands her in an all-day traffic jam. Fast-forward eight years. It’s opening night for the one-woman play she’s written and is starring in — a show called Breakout, about a Los Angeles traffic jam. Wildly funny, she skewers workaholics, road ragers, pickup artists, and car culture in general. Readers will see what her audience can’t — that the show is a portrait of herself, of her hunger for her mother and her terror of rejection, her free-floating identity and yearning for connection. Flashing between Del’s present and future, Breakout gives us a backstage pass into a young playwright’s psyche, letting us watch her life being transformed into an art, heartache into comedy, solitude into community, and anger gradually giving way to acceptance. [close]