Eminent Domain by Laura Leininger-Campbell
performance photos courtesy of Omaha Playhouse
26-show premiere a sellout
Eminent Domain saw its world premiere at the Omaha Community Playhouse in Omaha, Nebraska, August 25, 2017. The Playhouse is widely recognized as America’s top community theatre as measured by attendance, staff size and budget. With outstanding support from the theatre, nearly every performance of its 4-week run sold out in advance. “The authenticity of her characters,” according to Playhouse Executive Director Katie Broman, “makes this piece transcend time, setting and climate.”
“I am proud and honored to see this story enter the canon of American theatre,” said Omaha Playhouse Artistic Director Kimberly Hickman.
Does oil run thicker than blood? Or will a pipeline splitting the prairie tear a family apart? Eminent Domain explores the hard-fought battle between family farms and corporate energy, revealing the greater struggle beneath: how can a Heartland way of life survive without its next generation?
Our most crucial resource is not just the land—it is our kin, our clan, and our heritage.
Eugene O'Neill honors Eminent Domain
Leininger-Campbell received notification from the prestigious Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference that Eminent Domain, her first original play, was named a finalist for their 2016 conference, out of 1,500 entries.
The renowned conference nominates new plays through an anonymous, multilevel selection process including an artistic council made up of esteemed theatre professionals. According to O’Neill Artistic Director Wendy Goldberg, the finalists “represent some of the best playwrighting in the country today.”
Awards & Recognition
- Finalist, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 2016
- Best Original Script, Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards 2019
- Best Drama, Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards 2019
Michael Campbell composed and recorded music for Eminent Domain, including the introduction, nine scene change transitions, and the curtain call. These digital tracks are available to be licensed along with the play. Click the button below to hear it.
“A remarkable balance of tragedy and comedy in a work that is one hundred percent truthful. This is as good as it gets.”
“An exceptional new play… to explore roots of a family threatened with unwanted transformation of the soil on which they stand — which is to say that this is more about family than about ongoing environmental issues. Leininger-Campbell makes all of that work superbly. She has insights and ways to express them equal to produced writers with much more experience.”
“The story is ripped right
out of the headlines. The characters are
believable, you get deeply involved in their personal problems and care about the outcomes.”
Some of the cast of the Omaha Playhouse production, with Laura and director Amy Lane (seated center)
The story
“My acting background really helped me understand the structure of powerful scenes and what makes for good conflict,” explains Leininger-Campbell.
Playwright Ellen Struve noticed her knack for theatrical storytelling and encouraged her to create original script work.
“Ellen was instrumental in getting me going. She gave me a little notebook and said, ‘I think you have real stories in you. Go write them down.’ She was very influential, and she was the first person I called when I was done. I said, ‘I think I wrote something.’ And that something I wrote was Eminent Domain,” Leininger-Campbell says.
The play employs wit, humor, and powerful emotion to tell the poignant story of a Nebraska family whose farm is threatened by the construction of an oil pipeline. Leininger-Campbell spent lots of time on her own family’s farm growing up. The agrarian inspiration motivated her to write something inspired by news about the Keystone XL pipeline.
“I wanted to write about a farm family…and those memories of people who just remain in your heart. That story fit so perfectly with what I saw happening with KXL,” says Leininger-Campbell. “Much of my impetus to start writing comes from outrage, and once I identify my outrage, I try to understand both sides and expose them so people have something to talk about on the way home from the theater. I tried to depict both sides in Eminent Domain.”
Eminent Domain progressed from a notebook to a reading at the Shelterbelt Theatre to its world premiere, sold-out run at the Omaha Community Playhouse in 2017. Leininger-Campbell’s next touchpoint with the legacy of Eugene O’Neill came when Eminent Domain was named a 2016 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference finalist.
“Laura’s script came to my attention after its public reading at Shelterbelt Theatre, and I fell in love with it immediately,” says Kimberly Faith Hickman, artistic director at Omaha Playhouse. “I’m proud and honored to see this story enter the canon of American theatre, and for the Omaha Playhouse to have been the home for its world premiere.”
“The reaction we had at the Playhouse was great,” says Leininger-Campbell, who has sent queries nationwide for the piece. “Part of it is about the pipeline, but really it’s about a family that has to join together in trying times, and I can’t think of a better time than right now, when people are so polarized, to see a polarized family having to cleave together to solve their own problems. It’s a Nebraska story, but it’s an American play.”
Leininger-Campbell credits director Amy Lane for helping to clarify and enhance aspects of the script, and the cast for bringing the show to life. She also cites her husband, author/musician Michael Campbell, who was the first to read the play and later contributed the production’s music.
“He wrote these beautiful, amazing tunes, just on the knowledge of what he’d read about the characters. I was really lucky to have him as a collaborator,” says Leininger-Campbell.
KXL pipeline fighter Jane Kleeb attended the Shelterbelt reading—offering helpful feedback afterwards—and the Playhouse premiere.