Interview: Director John Perrin Flynn of A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Rogue Machine Theatre

Carlo Mancasola as Ryan and Nicholas Anthony Reid as Keith
All Interview photos by Jeff Lorch

Creating a masterclass in human connection, playwright Samuel D. Hunter explores the unique isolation experienced by two people carrying a weight of loneliness and financial insecurity in A Case for the Existence of God making its Los Angeles debut at Rogue Machine on September 5 at the Matrix Theatre, directed by John Perrin Flynn.

It takes place in a small office where lives are measured in credit scores, two strangers find themselves returning to the same conversation. Keith, a mortgage broker raising his daughter alone, and Ryan, a yogurt plant worker determined to reclaim a piece of his family's lost land, meet as client and lender. What unfolds instead is an unexpected connection between two fathers navigating uncertainty, responsibility, and the quiet weight of unrealized dreams. With wit, compassion, and emotional precision, this story touches an extraordinary humanity hidden within ordinary lives. What do we owe one another in a world shaped by inequality, and can small acts of trust and kindness become something transformative? 

This is the fifth play of Hunter’s that John Perrin Flynn (pictured) has directed, including the West Coast Premiere of Grangeville, which has had several extensions at the Ruskin Group Theatre Arts Center in Santa Monica. And according to audiences and critics alike, including me, it is one of best productions currently on L.A. stages. I spoke with John, a founding member of Rogue Machine who served as the first Artistic Director for the company (2008 – 2025), about directing the Los Angeles premiere of A Case for the Existence of God on its intimate upstairs Henry Murray Stage, and his vision to explore the play's unique blend of quiet male intimacy, financial struggle, and the definition of faith.

Thanks for speaking with me, John. Much like Hunter’s script for Grangeville, his script for A Case for the Existence of God is celebrated for exploring deep, non-romantic platonic love between two men. How did you guide the actors (Carlo Mancasola as Ryan and Nicholas Anthony Reid as Keith) to build vulnerability and emotional reliance on each other while keeping the dynamic platonic?

A Case for the Existence of God is very much a story about two men who feel isolated, alone, and see themselves as outsiders. Over the course of several eventful months, they find true friendship. The play explores how people fall into platonic love, and Sam has given us a beautiful blueprint for that journey. Ryan and Keith could not be more different: Keith is gay and Ryan is straight; Keith is highly educated and relatively well off.

Ryan is poor and a high school graduate. Both are young fathers and being a father is the most important thing to each man. Both face the same fear from the same existential challenge. Can they be the fathers they want to be?  Can they give their daughters the love and guidance they will need? For all their differences, they are kindred souls because of the obstacles, including some self-inflicted, they must confront.

Carlo Mancasola as Ryan and Nicholas Anthony Reid as Keith

The play hinges on a pivotal moment where the two leads admit to sharing a "specific kind of sadness." How did you work with the actors to articulate this without making the play overly bleak?

iant playwright. His work reflects our modern world so, to a certain extent, this is a story of two men who exist in a bleak world - what I love about Sam's work is he doesn't pull punches. He shows us this world, very much the world that we're alive in right now, but the story he tells is the story of how these men struggle to make a life worth living in such a world, how they struggle to find the good.  They don't always win - we might even say they don't often win - their truth is our truth. We take heart from the truth of their struggles, from their small wins and, most of all, from their hope.

It also helps that Sam sees and sharply dramatizes the humor in the struggle of everyday life. The play is very funny and makes us laugh. We have two extraordinarily gifted young actors who skillfully take us on the journey, making us laugh and cry.

How are Ryan and Keith similar or different from Hunter’s Arnold and Jerry in Grangeville? And how did that assist or make it more difficult working on both shows at the same time?

This is the 5th Hunter play I have directed. There are some common themes but each story has been unique. The plays are always character based. The plots arise from the character’s intentions and interactions - the conflicts that must be resolved, the challenges they face. Who they are – to each other and to themselves – is the story.

A Case for the Existence of God differs from all the other Hunter plays I have done in that it is a buddy story – not like any buddy story I know – this is a story that doesn’t lead to a perfect feel-good happy ending but rather to an understanding of how you might be able to find a way to be in this very imperfect world.

I love working on Sam’s plays – it is a great privilege to get lost in his dense, deeply rich worlds. Getting to do these two great plays back-to-back may be the gift of a lifetime.

Carlo Mancasola as Ryan and Nicholas Anthony Reid as Keith

Like many of Hunter's works, this play is set in Twin Falls, Idaho where he was raised and maintains ties. How did your direction capture the specific cultural and geographical realities of "flyover country," and how do these details translate universally?

It’s really in the writing. Sam’s people are everyday people – and I think they are universal – here in LA – on the East coast and in flyover country. The problems we face and how we face them define us.  Although there are those who would like to believe there are great differences, I am not one of them. Sam has a genius for presenting characters facing the everyday problems we all face wherever we may call home.

Despite its religious title, the play is firmly rooted in the earthly struggles of parenthood and capitalism. How did you balance the metaphysical implications of the title with the grounded, everyday setting of the play?

What better place to explore the metaphysical implications of our lives than the grounded, everyday life we live? What better vehicle than the theatre? All of us are haunted by the same questions – perhaps to different degrees – why am I here? What is the purpose of life? How can I be better? If there is a god, then what? If there isn’t a god, then what?

If God is in the details, what better place to seek her than in the everyday struggles of human beings, flawed because they are human, as they fight to find the good?

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” — Jane Goodall 

Carlo Mancasola as Ryan and Nicholas Anthony Reid as Keith

Ryan and Keith are both dealing with the precariousness of fatherhood and their financial futures. How did you and your design team (Stephanie Kerley Schwartz (Scenic Design), Ric Zimmerman (Lighting Design), Christopher Moscatiello (Sound Design), Christine Cover Ferro (Costume Design), Grant Gerrad (Technical Director) collaborate to ensure the office/cubicle setting felt real without overshadowing the human element?

I have worked with all of these designers in the past and Stephanie Kerley Schwartz and I first started working together in 2007. She was the resident production designer at Rogue Machine during my tenure as artistic director. We work together very well and anything I have done that she designed is better because of her. Chris Moscatiello, the sound designer, has also been working with me for many years and his contributions add so much more to the experience of the play than most people realize. I have worked less with Ric Zimmerman, the lighting designer, and Christine Cover-Ferro, the Costume Designer, but I am very lucky to have them.

Each time a team of designers comes together to make a new play or even a new production of an old play they must build the world within which that play exists. Although I have occasionally directed plays which seem realistic, I am not particularly interested in realism in the theater. Theatre cannot compete with film. When we create the world, the envelope, in which the story exists, we seek what will best serve our presentation of the story. In a play like Sam's Grangeville we create a world that has little relationship to the actual world; rather it is a world that reflects the mental state of the two brothers - how they have walled off the experiences they had as children - so that we first find them in a barren dark world with only a few persistent remnants of the lives they have led. 

Designing the world for A Case for the Existence of God is challenging. There are multiple locations. Sam has written the play so that we flow seamlessly from scene to scene - emphasizing not where the characters are but who they are and how they change each other. We still have to have enough "where" reality to ground the audience so they know what's going on. The first three scenes all happened in the daytime in the mortgage brokerage where Keith works. The 4th through 7th scene all take place and Keith's living room over a long night. Then there is a phone call where Ryan is in a break room at his work and Keith is in the office. Then there is a scene in Ryan's house and a scene at a playground. Finally, we go back to the office and on to a surprise location. We are doing this in our hyper intimate Henry Murray theatre. I think the designers have done extraordinary work in resolving how to present the play in this venue. What you see may seem realistic but it is not. It is very carefully constructed.

How did you go about casting with Victoria Hoffman?

I’d like to give a special shout out to Victoria who began her career as a casting director casting for Rogue Machine and now casts for a number of the other theaters in Los Angeles and also works as a film and television casting director. We believe some of the best actors in the world live in Los Angeles. You just have to find them. Victoria is good at that.

Carlo Mancasola as Ryan and Nicholas Anthony Reid as Keith

What do you hope audiences will be talking about after seeing the play?

How important hope is – it does indeed have feathers and it so wants to fly.

Anything else you would like to share about the production?

Thanks to you and all the critics of Los Angeles – you are unsung but heroes.

Thanks so much!

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