This script is in development. The synopsis below may not reflect the current script.

After Haven’s End High wins its Homecoming football game, star running back Ian Webber and his girlfriend, Daizha Parez, cross the nearly deserted school parking lot. Their playful conversation is interrupted when every car alarm begins sounding at once. Engines roar, radios turn on by themselves, and static overwhelms the lot. A white light flashes. Ian and Daizha vanish.

Shortly after midnight, Alex Wayfare hosts The Grim, WKED 94.8’s late-night call-in show, from a studio inside Haven’s End High. His producer, Riley Pack, is a junior at the school.

Alex is a Haven County College senior who once planned to leave for Syracuse but remained in town to care for his mother after her mental and physical decline. Riley, more optimistic about Haven’s End, hopes to attend college elsewhere but cannot afford to do so without financial aid.

Their ordinary Homecoming broadcast changes when Officer Martinez calls to announce that Ian and Daizha are missing. Because local teenagers may be more willing to contact the school radio station than the police, Martinez asks Alex and Riley to keep their lines open and collect information.

The station becomes the center of the town’s investigation. Alex and Riley speak with Daizha’s friend Avery, who reveals that Daizha had recently noticed something disturbing in an old photograph. School Board Chairman Morgan Pinson uses the broadcast to reassure the community, promote the next day’s Harvest Festival, and insist that Haven’s End always takes care of its own.

A regular caller, Sage Santorini, reports strange lights near Ian’s house and unusual interference on her telephone. Other callers begin connecting the disappearance to the history of Haven’s End High and its founder, Harold Creek.

An alumnus recounts the town’s founding legend. During a devastating agricultural crisis, Creek supposedly communicated with his deceased mother and with God. Soon afterward, his beet farm produced an impossible harvest, saving Haven’s End from the violence and control of the neighboring processing company.

Riley receives the old photograph that worried Daizha. It shows retired teacher Dr. Donough and her husband outside the school. When Riley increases the image’s exposure, a gaunt, ghostlike woman can be seen watching from a window behind them.

Alex calls Dr. Donough. Upon learning that Alex and Riley are inside the school, she panics, loads a shotgun, and warns them that “they” will do to the students what they did to her husband.

Officer Martinez arrives at Donough’s house while the call is still live. The station hears a struggle, screams, and two apparent gunshots. The power fails simultaneously at the Donough home and the school.

When the electricity returns, Martinez reports that Donough is dead—but only one shot came from her gun. Behind Donough’s ear is a burned symbol resembling an incomplete version of the school emblem.

While restoring power, Alex discovers students operating a ham radio in the old science wing. They transmit a frequency that causes him physical pain and appears to communicate with something inhuman.

Back at the station, Alex and Riley discover a green cassette tape hidden in a filing cabinet. It contains an earlier WKED Homecoming broadcast. On the recording, a former host and producer encounter an electrical surge identical to the one occurring that night. Through the static comes an unintelligible, extraterrestrial voice.

The tape proves that the events are not new.

Alex and Riley search the school’s archived yearbooks. Every five years, beginning with the school’s earliest graduating classes, one man and one woman have been circled in red.

Many of the selected people later disappeared, died under unusual circumstances, lost spouses or children, or became psychologically damaged. The current unpublished yearbook points unmistakably toward Ian and Daizha.

Alex’s mother, a former principal, is among the names that have been circled and later crossed out. She bears a mark behind her ear similar to Dr. Donough’s.

A former librarian and her daughter also appear in the pattern. So do Dr. Donough’s husband and Daizha’s father.

The head of the Harvest Festival confirms that Creek’s legacy has been deliberately suppressed. Although he helped establish the school and protected the community from economic violence, he was eventually exposed for assaulting a female student.

The town rejected him but continued using the secret that had enriched its harvests. The first victim may have been the same student Creek abused.

Before ending the call, the festival organizer warns Alex that the people behind the tradition intend to do to Ian what they once did to Creek.

Sage reports that luminous orbs have appeared around selected homes for decades before returning to Creek Chapel. Alex realizes that his mother was taken during an earlier cycle but somehow returned.

Officer Martinez then calls to announce that she has found Daizha. Before she can reveal the location, someone attacks her. The station surges with electricity, and the alien voice again breaks through.

Cultists invade WKED and abduct Riley. Chairman Pinson speaks to Alex through Martinez’s phone, revealing himself as the leader of the conspiracy.

The beings revered by the cult are not divine spirits but vast, formless extraterrestrials known as Mother and Father. Every five years, the cult selects a man and a pregnant woman. A low radio frequency forces the human consciousness from each body, allowing the beings to possess them.

Mother and Father then reproduce through the stolen bodies. The fetus becomes a vessel for their offspring. In return, the creatures have seemingly protected Haven’s End’s land and prosperity for generations.

Those who resist possession are rendered infertile, branded, and released under threat of silence. Alex’s mother, Daizha, and a former performer named Charity all survived failed “acquisitions.” Others—including Ian—were successfully possessed.

Because Mother cannot inhabit Daizha, the cult chooses Riley as a replacement “Producer.” Ian, possessed by Father, is held captive at Creek Chapel.

Pinson forces Alex to amplify the alien frequency through WKED’s full broadcasting system. Unless Alex cooperates, the cult will torture and kill Riley.

Alex pretends to surrender. Before transmitting, he asks permission to sign off to his listeners. Through an awkward series of references to “sage advice” and going to “church,” he covertly tells Sage Santorini where Riley is being held.

The ritual begins. Cultists chant while the frequency transmits through the station. Alex disrupts the signal with deafening feedback, forcing Father out of Ian’s body.

At the same moment, Sage drives an old pickup truck through the doors of Creek Chapel, scattering the cult and rescuing Riley, Daizha, Ian, and Officer Martinez.

The surviving cultists flee, and Pinson is no longer in a condition to explain or defend himself. Martinez prepares to bring in outside law enforcement and warns that the conspiracy may reach far beyond those exposed that night.

Alex and Riley return to the air. Alex thanks the listeners who helped them solve the case and acknowledges the station’s most devoted caller.

The night has transformed him. Once dismissive of Haven’s End and convinced that no one could escape its gravity, he has used the town’s own communication network to save its residents from the tradition controlling them.

The crisis appears to be over—but the final moments suggest that the frequency, the entities, and the town’s appetite for secrecy may not be gone for good.

SOUND DESIGN

Sound is not merely atmospheric in Dead Air; it is the play's central storytelling mechanism and a physical force within the plot.

While the majority of the action in Dead Air takes place inside Haven's End High, the production requires a detailed  sonic vocabulary to adequately communicate the on-air locations, action, and suspense, including:

• Radio static and interference

• Phone calls

• Recorded broadcasts

• Music beds and station bumpers

• Car alarms and engines

• Electrical surges

• Fluorescent buzz

• Ham-radio signals

• Low-frequency tones

• Feedback

• Gunshots

• Distant activity across town

• Alien vocalizations

• Cult chanting

• The destruction of Creek Chapel

The original concert production incorporated an infrasound frequency (under 20Hz) into the entire sound design—a tactic commonly used the horror film genre—in order to elicit a psychophysical response of suspense through the play.

HISTORY

Dead Air began development at Brigham Young University in 2025, with Nathan Holley serving as playwright and sound designer. It's had its first public concert performance on April 15, 2025. The play is currently undergoing revision and is available for developmental readings, workshops, dramaturgical collaboration, and future production consideration.

NATHAN HOLLEY (PLAYWRIGHT)