Performer, playwright and descendent of Herman Melville, Elizabeth Doss “talks back” to The Confidence Man, the last novel Melville published in his lifetime. Set on a steamboat cruising down Mississippi, Doss jumps aboard, probing this text to grapple with her own encounters with “Confidence Men”, not to mention her own flagging confidence, and what on earth Melville is really getting at in his most perplexing text. Still in its larval stage, Doss asks, “Do you need to read The Confidence Man?”, or does it deserve its obscurity? This solo performance offers a mixture of insight, ignorance, and stabs at hilarity.
