Buen Camino

Touring from Hawaii, Susan Edsall brings Buen Camino, directed and developed by Jessica Lynn Johnson, to the Yellow Bicycle Theatre (1435 Arch St) for the 2025 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Susan has a perfect life, a perfect love, and perfect happiness. When she suddenly undergoes an unexpected loss, her perfect life ends. Consumed by excruciating pain, she finds it impossible to imagine any future worth living.

Until, on an ordinary trip to the grocery store, she hears The Voice. The trouble is, Susan doesn’t believe in Voices. And yet, when The Voice tells her to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain, she obeys despite knowing nothing about this ancient pilgrimage.

At rock bottom, Susan has nothing left to lose except the stories that bind her to the past. With the help of some improbable Spiritual Guides, a little bit of magic, and the Camino itself, Susan must face her past to have any hope of creating her future.

Alone on stage, she becomes 23 characters to take the audience on her solitary walk through 540 miles of rain, resentment, and redemption. Buen Camino is a moving story of how grief can lead to surrender and ultimately to freedom. 

“Through the vivid, funny and at times heartbreaking story of an excruciating and intense time in her life, she magically transfers her own metamorphoses, from profoundly bereft widow to hopeful, determined and inspiring human, to us — the audience. Both the performer and the observers undoubtedly changed by art created out of tragedy.” –NoHo Arts District