Adam Szymkowicz's Blog, page 62

November 1, 2014

Monologues For Women

From time to time, actors ask me for monologues. I thought it would be easiest to put them all in one place. Here are some monologues from published plays for women.

SNOW

1.

SARA

I’ve been careful, always very careful. Sure there are people who leave the house more than I do. They take strolls, they cross streets in the midst of traffic. They get on airplanes and fly halfway across the world. And I say good for them. If they want to risk their lives daily, let em. But don’t ask me to. I’m fine how I am. It is true I have not left my apartment in three years. Everyone delivers in New York. Everyone. My mother says I would meet more people if I left my apartment—but I have my college friends I still call and email and of course there is a large online community waiting to hear my every word. Anyway, people die when they take risks. I’ve seen it happen.

THE WHY OVERHEAD

1.

KAREN

(to her DOG)

I see you looking at me. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I should get dressed and go to work. “Get going,” your eyes say. But I am moving. You might not see it, but I’m moving. It’s slow sure, but I’m faster than erosion. Faster than continental drift. But wait a minute. Let me rest. What’s the hurry? Live in the moment here with me. I’m here right now and I aim to stay here for another few minutes, an hour, a day. Everything will go on without me. I didn’t go to work yesterday or the day before and yet the world continues to revolve. New York does not need me. People go about their lives. No one calls to ask where I am. It’s like I don’t exist at all. But I do exist don’t I?

Please stop judging me. I don’t need to go to work, not today. It won’t affect the food in your dish. You’ll get fed. And you won’t be lonely.

Please don’t say anything. I know you disapprove and I hear you but it’s really not what I want right now and I know you subscribe to a sort of tough love viewpoint, but sometimes that’s not very helpful and furthermore, not appreciated. Don’t look at me like that. I do appreciate you, just not the hard line you try to draw sometimes. The world is not black and white. And colors can be confusing, so let me sit and rest and figure out a few things, okay? It’ll be fun. I can stay here all day with you. We can watch bad romantic comedies and you can jump up on the bed and curl up with me and we can eat crackers if we want. I won’t kick you out. And tomorrow? (beat) Who knows? Let’s just think of today. Everything is so uncertain these days.

2.

JESSICA

Because I can’t handle things falling on my head. My older brother when I was a kid, used to drop things on me. He would pin me to the ground and then drop things on my face. Gummi Bears, ping pong balls, chocolate chips, our goldfish.

Legos, Barbie heads, pens, popsicles, water balloons, eggs, tin foil, socks, shoes, magnets, pieces of paper, jello, cereal, the cat.

Marshmallows, a slinky, legos. Flowers, ice, a recorder, matches, unlit. Matches, lit. matchbox cars, cellophane, statue of the virgin Mary, chapstick, butter, and then liquids. Juice, milk, water of course. Salt, pepper, thyme, rosemary, parsley, bacon bits, tongue depressors, spit, oregano, pancakes, stuffed animals, marbles, lettuce, sticks, forks, spoons, wood chips, chopsticks, erasers. Legos. Did I say legos? Toast, rubber balls, hackey sacks, Frisbees, action figures, dirt, spare change, mints, catfish.

It is my dream to someday lock him in a room, handcuff him to a chair and spend all day and night dumping things over his head.

3.

ANNIE

Something like this makes you think about what you know about yourself, your likes and dislikes, your way in the world. I feel like all this time the things I disliked were really the things I liked and possibly vice versa. I’m not sure what that means except I might be in love.

4.

JESSICA

Everything is not about the two of you, and your bets and side bets, your tantrums, your proposals, your lust and your desires. I can have desires and you don’t have to enter into them in any way. I can have sex dreams and sex day dreams and they can be about someone else. I’m tired of being tied down or covered up. I am not a statue on a pedestal or a flower in a vase. I am not just a beautiful thing, although I am that for sure. But I want to be recognized for who I am, not only how I look. I don’t want to always be protected from the world by other people. You don’t have to build a ceiling over me. I don’t need it. I don’t know. Treat me like a normal person, not the freak in the room who happens to be incredibly incredibly beautiful.

5.

SUE

Well thank you all. I don’t know that that will help me catch the perp per se but I do feel like we’re getting somewhere. Everyday, we try to get somewhere new. That’s the way I try to live my life and it’s working out so far. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s not perfect. My life is not ideal.

I used to be an addict. It burned down a lot of bridges behind me. There are a lot of people who won’t talk to me anymore though I wish they would. I’m not telling you this because I want your sympathy. Or pity. I’m just a person. I went through something and came out the other side, scarred but intact. And there is temptation of course everyday but I tell myself, that was a bad life I led. And I embraced the law and what is good and right because it seemed like the opposite way was the way to go, you know?

People can change.

Most people don’t. But they can. You can go to God. That works for some people. Or shrinks or I don’t know. We all have our own paths. But I think it’s important to make sure you’re on the right path for you, you know? Look at where you’re going. Get out of the car, examine the map, make plans if you can. But don’t just put your foot down on the gas and shoot down the highway in the fast lane without proper consideration of where the fuck you’re going.

But really I guess what I want to say is would you like to go out sometime?

FOOD FOR FISH



<div class="MsoNormal">
1.</div>
 
ALICE 
What you speak of, I think, Fred is a coldness I have managed to cultivate towards the majority of men. Because I give off the air of not caring about you and because I speak to you and others brusquely, because I am short and dismissive with you, you think there must be something about me. I get many dates because of this. Perhaps you think I am like this all the time, but I am not. It disappears when I go home. It is not anything true. Because when I go home I am under a different spell. Not unlike the way you are under mine. Do you understand? 
 
FRED 
I think I love you. 
 
ALICE 
All right, well, add your name to the chalkboard and leave me a sample of your genetic material and we’ll see what comes of it. I promise not to erase your name prematurely. 
 
2. 
 
ALICE 
Oh, Father, what am I doing? I don’t know who I am anymore. I go to work in a fog. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my days and nights? Look at me, ready for another date, a date I don’t want to go on but why sit at home when another cold soup man is willing to buy me a another hot meal. So I put on the date lipstick and the date perfume, because who knows, maybe this time, this man, but no, he too will sit in a shadow and I will stop listening in the first minute. 
 
Why is my life not like yours and mother’s? Why is my bank account empty at the end of every month and my bed empty at the end of every night? This was not the way you lived, even when you were digging and burying. I am unable to bury a damned thing. Help me. Help me, Father. What am I supposed to be doing? How can I get through this night? Or tomorrow? 
 
3. 
 
SYLVIA 
Go ahead and stop me then. (Silence) What you can’t? No, you can’t stop me now, can you? The night is blank and the streets are empty. I pick a direction at random and begin running. I feel like I am running through water. My legs don’t move like I tell them. My brain is mush holding on to a single thought—that I must find him. I run and I run and the air is water and my brain is melting. I am about to give up. I can’t see anything, anyone, anywhere. And then he is there. 
 
(BOBBIE caught in streetlamp.) 
 
SYLVIA 
Where were you? 
 
(BOBBIE tries to kiss her. She turns away again. He begins to walk away again, hurt.) 
 
SYLVIA 
No, I’m sorry. Don’t go. Shit! I’m so stupid. Wait for me. 
 
(BOBBIE and SYLVIA walk.) 
 
SYLVIA 
He walks more slowly this time. As if he’s waiting for me. But he still doesn’t look in my direction or seem to see me in his periphery. I stare at him as we walk along, oblivious to the night, the neighborhood, to everything. Then we are standing in front of a brownstone. Then we are in the hall. Then we are in his apartment or what I assume is his apartment. 
 
(BOBBIE goes to his desk, opens the drawer, takes out his handgun. He looks down the barrel for a while. They are both completely still. Then BOBBIE slowly turns his head and looks at SYLVIA.) 
 
SYLVIA 
How can I explain that I’m not afraid? Yes, it is dangerous, but not any more dangerous than falling in love. When it comes down to it what it really does is make a piece of metal move very quickly. It doesn’t ever get to the root of things. It just takes care of the surface problem—if that’s what it’s for, that is. I don’t ask what it’s there for. But let me be clear I’m not afraid. 
 
(BOBBIE puts the gun back. Sits down and begins to type.) 
 
SYLVIA 
I am more afraid of what he is writing. I am afraid of his command of language, his diction, the way the verbs might rub up against my palate or jam themselves, get stuck in my throat. I am afraid I might like it too much, get used to it. Or maybe instead it’s the opposite: I am afraid of disappointment. I am afraid of who I think he is and more afraid he isn’t. 
 
(BOBBIE stops typing, slips the sheet into a bottle and corks it.) 
 
SYLVIA 
Then he speaks to me for the first time, although he looks away from me as if anyone in the room might catch his voice and latch onto it and find meaning in it and, if it happened to be me, well so be it. He says: 
 
"If you stay here, I will hold you all night long." 
 
So I do. 
 
<a href="http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/... LIKE FISTS</a> 
 
<style>


1. 
 
LISA 
What is this feeling, so unpleasant, like my insides rotting or my outside melting? There is a bad taste in my mouth that won’t go away. I feel itchy and oversized and everything is crawling. Is this what rejection is? Isn’t there usually a heaviness to it? An unbearable weight? (beat) Oh, there it is. A big boat of depression sailing over my chest. 
 
It hurts. It hurts so much. It’s not—is it me? No one has ever rejected me before. He must be a lunatic. He must be some sort of nutcase. Someone not all there, because why else--? Ohhh. Or he can see everything wrong with me, all the things I’m afraid are there but can forget about. He knows I’m no good. I could have fought Doctor X harder. I could have climbed the fire escape faster maybe. Or I could have tried harder to love them back. If I had made myself maybe or— 
 
1b. 
 
LISA 
What do people do after they get rejected? Do they curl into a ball and die? Do they tear out their hair? Drink themselves into oblivion? I want to do all of these things at once. 
 
There must be something outstanding about him if he’s too good for me. Now I will never want anyone besides him. All other men are fools and idiots who could never measure up. No, there is nothing to do now except commit to a life of celibacy. A life with meaning. (She takes out her cell phone and dials the number on the card the Crimefighters gave her.) Hello, Crimefighters? (A huge crash.) 
 
2. 
 
NINA 
Doctor X is just so exciting. And wrong. So exciting and wrong. I think the other girls have an inkling. Because I—I let him get away. I paused. If you know me, you know I’m not someone who ever pauses. I run into any situation, burning building, shark infested pool, without a thought. But I saw Doctor X and I paused, to the point of stopping even. And it was not revulsion I was feeling. Well, it was, but it was mixed with something else, something potent. I’m not sure what. They should bottle it if they could ever find a way to collect it. They’d make millions. 
 
NINA 
He just stood there, looking at me, with his doctor’s bag and syringe. He showed no remorse. Remorseless. Soulless maybe. And it took my breath away. I’m terrified of what might happen the next time I run into him. You have to be ready at all times to kill if necessary. But when I think—I’m not sure I could do it in this case. I dread our next meeting and at the same time I look forward to it more than anything in my entire life. You know what I mean? 
<a href="http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/... 
 
1. 
 
SUSAN 
(Suddenly intense) 
I think you’re the one who’s never had a really good kiss. A good kiss is like a knife. The best kiss I ever had hurt more than anything. It couldn’t help it. A really good kiss can’t help but hurt you ‘cause you give part of yourself away. Make yourself vulnerable to it. A kiss, a real kiss severs nerves and cuts through you and that’s an injury you’ll never recover from. 
 
2. 
 
SUSAN 
Sometimes it’s like you can’t feel anything because the conversations in your head are too loud. You have no connection to your body and you’re numb and depressed. The dancers in your head are twisted into knots. And there are voices, these hurtful voices and the only way to shut them up is to take a knife and cut yourself. Then, the numbness drains out, the dancers are free, and you can feel again for a while. 
 
<a href="http://www.samuelfrench.com/p/515/pre... THEFT</a> 
 
<style>


 
1. 
 
SUZY 
(Shoplifting) 
Well I wouldn’t shut up, would I? When you don’t shut up, the boys notice you. Course, eventually you realize no one was really listening. And you stop speaking up in class—realize maybe you weren’t saying anything anyway—not something someone else couldn’t say better--usually a boy. And the boys who seemed to be listening to you weren’t quite the right boys. 
 
SUZY 
(Stuffing her pockets.) 
So you stopped talking. But then you realize if you lift up your shirt there are boys that like that too. But maybe those aren’t quite the right boys either because then later those boys want to see what’s in your pants. And want to put themselves in you even if you’re not ready and maybe those aren’t the right boys either but at least they need you for a few minutes. 
 
SUZY 
(Stuffing her bag.) 
Then you go after your friend’s boyfriend because it’s wrong and it’s fun and because your friend is pretty. And you get him but once you have him, you realize he’s no good. And your friend hates you. But you do it again anyway to another friend. And the girls all begin to hate you. They call you a skank and they call you a whore. But some of the boys like you some of the time. But they think you’re a slut. So you embrace it because what else can you do? You buy a t-shirt that says “Fuckdoll” and a series of short skirts and you try on provocative lipsticks. 
 
2. 
 
ALLEGRA at a bed talking to her FATHER who faces away from us. He wears an oxygen mask and does not move.) 
 
ALLEGRA 
And I’m working at this like group home with Suzy Harris. We hang out a lot. You know who she is? I think you’d like her. She’s a lot of fun. She was supposed to come here with me today but . . . she couldn’t make it. 
 
Bobby’s good. He works at the garden place in Salem sometimes on the weekends. He wishes he could be here too. He’s uh . . . a good boyfriend. I think it’ll last for us. One of the great . . . things. 
 
Fuck! It’s just as hard to talk to you now that you can’t talk back. I can’t ever say the right thing to you. You’re just so . . . not there, aren’t you. You always ignore me. I know even if you can hear me right now, you’re not paying attention. You never . . . Why don’t I matter to you? What do you want from me?!! Maybe you just want to be left alone. 
 
Well, that’s what I’ll do then. I’m sorry I disturbed your death bed you selfish fucking bastard! You self-centered egotistical, pompous fucking bastard! I don’t care what you want! I hope you die! I hope you fucking die real soon! You can fucking rot and be eaten by worms! I hope fucking worms eat you! Worms with big fucking teeth! And rats and flies and vultures! I hope vultures dig you up and take you out of the casket and fly away with you! You fuck! 
 
(Pause) 
 
I miss you. 
 
I’ve always missed you. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to die. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, Christ, I’m so sorry. Please don’t die. You’re so small. Please, Daddy. 
 
(ALLEGRA kisses his forehead.) 
 
3. 
 
(ALLEGRA’s house. ALLEGRA’S MOM sits, facing away from us, watching TV. ALLEGRA approaches her mother.) 
 
ALLEGRA 
I know you’re probably mad at me for leaving before the funeral, but I just can’t do it. My whole body itches and it won’t stop until I get in a car and can’t see this house or this town or this state from the rearview window. 
 
This way is better. This way I’ll come back from my trip and go straight to school and you won’t have to look at me or think about me. You can tell people you have a daughter but you won’t have to talk to me on the phone or see me on the couch. I’ll be a no-maintenance daughter just like you always wanted. 
 
I’m going to go now. I know someday you’ll want to talk to me again. Maybe after I graduate and get a job and get married and buy a house and have my own daughter. Then you can talk to her and be her favorite and then we can pretend you were a really great mother. She won’t know and I don’t have to tell her. 
 
But now I’m going to get on the road and push you out of my mind and I probably won’t think of you until I get to the grand canyon or some other fairly good canyon and maybe I’ll cry in front of the mammoth orange hole in the ground or maybe I’ll smile because it’s so beautiful and I’m free and windswept. 
 
But first I’m going to get into Suzy’s mom’s car and we’ll drive till there’s just drops left in the tank and as we cross the border into Massachusetts, we’ll roll into the first gas station where I’ll get some Ding Dongs and some orange soda and I’ll bite into the first one sitting on the hood, watching the car slurp up gas. Then I’ll get in the driver’s seat and put my foot on the accelerator until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. So I pull over and we both close our eyes and sleep until we’re awoken at three am by separate but equally terrible nightmares. 
 
4. 
 
WAITRESS 
You have instincts and part of you knows things but the other part of you doesn’t want it to be so. So you say, “no, that’s not it.” A does not lead to B because hey that’s far fetched. Who would believe? The mind is being dramatic and should not be encouraged. Been letting it go too much. Too much time alone to consider too many possibilities. 
 
But to answer your question Tom, sure there was two girls in here. Had some sandwiches. Left right before you came in. Don’t know where they went. Didn’t say. 
 
Just paid and left. Young girls. Too cute for their own good. Are they in trouble or are they themselves trouble? It’s got to be one or the other. No, don’t tell me. I don’t need to know. 
 
Can I offer you some ice cream. Sure, you can stay a minute. Or long enough for a bowl. Them girls is probably long gone by now. Down a back road never to be seen again. Now how ‘bout that? Never to be seen again. That would be something. 
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Published on November 01, 2014 10:00

Monologues For Men

From time to time, actors ask me for monologues. I thought it would be easiest to put them all in one place. Here are some monologues from published plays for men.

SNOW

1.

ED

I’ve been careful, always very careful. Before touching a woman I put on rubber gloves. Some women are taken aback sure, when you pull out rubber gloves and dental dams but what kinds of women are those?—women that know they have diseases. And those are not the type of women I want to know in any case. So when people ask me if I’m upset at being a virgin at my age, I say no way.

I’m just looking for a clean woman. I am not against kissing—I just want to make sure her mouth is well cleaned first. If she would brush her teeth and then gargle with mouthwash for a minimum of sixty seconds. I, of course would also brush and mouthwash. I like cleanliness, that’s all. We are all dirty. God knows I scrub my hands before putting those rubber gloves on.

THE WHY OVERHEAD

1.

NIGEL
You better run. You better be afraid of me. I am a man. I am a big man and I won’t take this kind of insanity from a girl like you! I have scaled mountains. I have forged rivers. I have run in races. I built snow caves and spent the night in them. You hear me?! I jumped out of airplanes. I drove a motorcycle. I am very hairy. I work out two or three times a week. With free weights. I eat lots of vegetables. I am a fairly good pool player. Also pinochle. I could catch a tiger if I had the right equipment and enough time on my hands and if I was in the vicinity of tigers. I have a charming personality. I can make up jokes that people repeat later and don’t even realize they’re mine. I can make intricate cages out of popsicle sticks. My chest is enormous! I am a wealth of knowledge about music and musicians, especially in the years nineteen fifty nine to nineteen ninety-four. I write poetry. I won an award once for punctuality. My smile is terrific. I used to be a choir boy. I can peel oranges with great speed and dexterity. I am good at choosing shoes. I once played tennis for three hours. I am omnipotent! Okay, well maybe that last one isn’t true. But I am a man and I will crush you. You hear me?! YOU HEAR ME?!!

2.

DONALD
(to CAT)
“Manifesto to leave behind after everything has happened to explain why in case it is less than obvious.”

(DONALD clears his throat, reads.) “There are certain times in history when certain actions become necessary. Right now it is a time when there are great inequalities. I have taken on the responsibility to right wrongs to stop injustice and to use the pen here and later the sword so that the words from my pen will be read. Anyone can write anything, but you also have to get people to read what you write. That’s what the sword is for. I stand before you a man ready to take drastic actions. There are men that take actions and men that do nothing but complain. We are all angry but only the brave few who stand up and fight back will be able to accomplish anything of note. History will show that my actions were the right actions at the right time. History will record today as the turning point for America when a wave of citizens led by me took back their country.”

“I ask that in my absence, one of my future followers take care of my cat Mittens. She needs neither food nor water. She has evolved beyond life. She only requires company and for someone to talk to her and listen to her. I know that Mittens and I will see each other in the next life and I wouldn’t be surprised if she became a conduit for my messages from beyond the grave. In the past, I have spoken to many great leaders through her. Like Marie Antoinette, John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Henry Ford, and a spirit guide dog named Hamish. So when you need to reach me, ask Mittens nicely and I’m sure she will oblige. And through her I will give you future guidance on how to overthrow the government and corporations and create a civilization for the people by the people. The right people, that is.”

“In conclusion, when statues of me are built, I ask that Mittens be portrayed as well in bronze or gold or whatever. Her guidance has been incredibly helpful and without her I couldn’t have accomplished what my actions accomplished. Like the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the small deeds of today will reverberate for generations.”

“I sign this with my left hand though I am right handed.” And then I signed it. Do you like it?

3.

DONALD
At the end of the day, when the shit goes down, it turns out I’m not who I thought I was. And that makes me sad. I mean it’s important to know, but I want to be the kind of person that starts a revolution not the kind of person that doesn’t. I don’t know. I’m going to need to go home and talk to my cat. If she’s still there, that is.

FOOD FOR FISH

1.

BOBBIE
When you have visions that beat at your brains while other people are talking. When you hear non-stop streams of screams. When synapses pop or won’t stop crackling, and when blood pumps, and the pounding don’t stop pounding. Then you look for an exit to start the ending or search sideways in vain to extract a distraction, but even then, what will curls of hair give to you, hips and breasts, lips sip out of you, in a moment, distract what abstraction pounds-pounds ‘til you steal . . . a kiss.

I dress in haste, pull the hood on my head and I take to the street, boot in front of boot to find her. Who will she be tonight?

Last night she was brunette, blue-lipped and serious, mouth curled around a tiny white smokestack, long leopard-fur coat collecting snowflakes on its tips. When she stopped in the streetlamp, I was there. I was a boy and she was not afraid. She took a drag and I took her lips and all her smoke and sadness drained into me. She gasped in the kiss and the snow fell on her lashes. When she opened her eyes, I was gone.

That night I took my silver pen knife from the drawer of my desk—the only furniture I own. I opened the blade, splayed my left hand on the desk and stabbed myself with the right.

(BOBBIE stops typing.)

BOBBIE
No! No! NO! That’s not right. No one would do that. It’s so fucking stupid. It’s so fucking . . .

(BOBBIE stops himself, takes out a knife, and stabs himself in the hand. He yells out in pain.)

BOBBIE
Ahhhhh!

2.

(A coffin sits prominently in the sister’s apartment. BARBARA –played as a woman by a man in drag--sits beside it. ALICE is reading a scientific journal and making notes. SYLVIA is reading a newspaper.)

BARBARA
It’s been a year since Father died. When Mother died, I was only seven and three quarters but I had to become the mother to you both as well as your older sister. Did I do right by you? I tried, you know.

I had to learn how to be a woman from television. “One Life to Live,” “Days of Our Lives,” “All My Children,” “General Hospital,” “Daylight Menagerie,” “Passionate Embrace,” “Dallas” and the magazines of course. I skipped Seventeen and went straight to Mademoiselle, Ms., Playgirl, Good Housekeeping, Home and Garden, House and Kitchen, Modern Woman, Lady of Leisure. I stayed home like a mother would and studied, catalogued every gesture and practiced-practiced to be an adult so that you didn’t have to. Then when you came home I would show you what I had learned and you would smile. Because I had kept you from the pain and from the responsibility of being a woman.

Now that Poppa is dead I must learn to be a father to you as well. I watch my husband carefully to see if he is the right model. He must be firm yet flexible, strong yet not afraid to show weakness, quiet and reserved, yet emotional and expressive. He must be bold. He must be vulnerable. He must not be afraid to show fear or to cry in front of others. He must not be a sissy. He must work all day and then come home and then he must take out the trash. He must give orders and take suggestions. He must do as I say but never be influenced by exterior forces. The leader of the house, and of course, my servant. In short he must be a man, the new man--like Father was and like Father would be still if only . . .

Do you remember a year ago today? Father fell asleep watching Fox news and didn’t wake up. There was a panic of course and the shock and the sorrow eventually.

3.

(BOBBIE paces, he looks at the letter again. He crumples it up and throws it. He pounds the desk in anger, then puts a new sheet of paper in the typewriter. He types.)

BOBBIE
Dear Sir, Did you even read my masterpiece? If you had, you would not be sending me this form letter of rejection. Not unless you are indeed a complete and worthless moron. I do not accept you as an arbiter of real talent. I have more talent than all of you put together if it comes to that! You with your hackneyed conventions, have usurped the foremost places in art and consider nothing genuine and legitimate except what you yourselves do. Everything else you stifle and suppress. I do not accept you. I do not. It was optimistic of me to think that you were not an undiscerning fool.

Are you all conspiring against me, you with your form letters on separate letterheads that converge into one voice? As punishment for this, your highest crime, know that you have pushed me to eschew publication altogether. Know that you and the others and the world at large will miss out on the rest of my work which I shall never again let you touch with your dirty and destructive hands. My work belongs to eternity now. To the universe of ephemera. But never to you. May you find your just punishment knowing you have kept another genius from the hungry world who aches to hear him. Sincerely, The Author Who Would Have Made You Famous.

4.

BOBBIE
I know the tricks of being a boy. I know how to act like I’m not interested. I know how to feign disinterest. I know how to walk away, how to not call, how to ignore her insinuations that she likes me. In short, I know how to play dumb. I know all this not from being taught but because I am a smart boy and that’s what smart boys know.

But I can no longer use my tricks of being a boy. Because suddenly I am in love and all the crafty tricks I’d collected are useless against her laughter, her dimples, her eyes. In short, I am no longer a smart boy. She has made me dumb.

5.

DEXTER
About us. We got married too quick. Your father was sick then already. And we leaped into the thing even though we didn’t know each other very well. You were my first love and then before we knew it we were married. You were taking care of your father every day and then the fear came for you and you stopped leaving the house and I trudged to work day after day and tried to become numb and not think about what was I doing. It was my life. Work and home and work and home. And at home, your father was coughing into his oxygen tank and your sisters were bickering. I was becoming smaller. In the office, I had a new boss every few months--they were interchangeable in their corporate slogans and brand name business attire and just as I would get used to one, he or she would be promoted and so I never knew any of them long enough for them to even know what I was supposed to be doing. Not that I could tell you that. And I still can’t. I’m not even sure who I am. I’ve become so insignificant.

HEARTS LIKE FISTS

1.

(Spotlight on DOCTOR X, a truly terrible creature with sunken eyes and deep scars all over. Disfigured, stethoscope round the neck, wearing a doctor’s lab coat, carrying a doctor bag.)

DOCTOR X
I have a face like a bowl of worms. Squirming around the ticks, the scars, the moles. It’s disgusting. A face like this. It’s absurd, without meaning or purpose. And I honestly can’t say if I’m an experiment gone awry or if I was just born this way. I have no origin. I have no memory. I can only remember you. The way you looked at me, the first time you saw me, it was like you saw the bowl underneath the worms. Your face was like a china plate. Perfect. Whole. Pristine. And you looked at me, the way you looked at me—

The patient had died. That much I remember. His wife was wailing but I couldn’t hear her. Because you were there and everything else melted away. “Let’s have a drink,” you said with your face like a plate. And we drank and we drank and we went to my place and we made love like normal people. And it continued that way for days, weeks, years. I can’t say for sure. Why can’t I remember? If I could only remember, maybe I could find you.

Or maybe I could figure out when how why you grew tired of me. Was it then I became what I am? Your body was like liquor and I couldn’t get enough, couldn’t spend a night without you, a minute, a second. I didn’t know you weren’t drunk on me. How could I have missed the diagnosis? How could I have avoided the bald shock, the morning discovery, to wake up and find your note?

And now I can’t remember anything except you. Your face everywhere I go. You will pay. Everyone will pay. You will all pay dearly.

2.

PETER
She will hurt you. She will break you over her knee. She will hurt you and she will tear you and she will rip you apart. Who are you that you think you can withstand her? You are just a man. You are a vulnerable man with tiny veins and blood rushing through you too fast. You have your career. You don’t need complications. Not now. Now when the heart is just about ready to be tested. You are no one. No one and the heart is everything and you can’t sacrifice these things for a tingling in your toes. For a pretty face. Such a pretty pretty face. Carries an electromagnetic field wherever she goes. Makes your heart beat faster than it has in years. She will break you. She will hurt you and tear you and break you and pull you until there will be nothing of you left. She will—

(PETER stands. He takes his coat and leaves the restaurant.)

3.

(DOCTOR X approaches a sleeping couple who have arrived surreptitiously. He prepares his needles.)

DOCTOR X
I don’t have to think when I’m working. I don’t have to feel. I don’t get angry about the things I can’t remember because all I need to know is the work in front of me. Everyone will pay! And the things I can remember don’t haunt me. Her face like a plate. Her disappearance. Or her laugh, always startling, but runs right through you. Or who I am. Who am I? I don’t have to think about that now. I have lovers to kill. I can concentrate on the damage I will inflict. You will all pay! There is something satisfying about an accomplished task. How can you be ever truly depressed if you accomplish all you set out to do? Someday it’s just enough to get out of bed. Or to kill a couple of people. No more. Yes the refrigerator is empty but as long as something was accomplished, well then, it’s back to bed. A sleep and maybe in the morning, a remembering. A thought about my mother. A vision of a room. And her, always her, with a face you want to eat off. (He injects them both.) Well that’s done.

4.

(PETER in his workshop in the hospital, takes an artificial heart out of a box. It beats.)

PETER
Here you are, my spare heart. Mother said, always have a spare. You never know, she said. Do everything twice. Just in case. Always have an extra pencil. Always bring an extra sandwich. And give it away if you can. To the kid with the torn jacket who smells like pee. And if they say thank you, say “you’re welcome,” or “think nothing of it,” or “no thanks is necessary.” Tell them “I can see you’re a human being who needs something. We all need something sometimes and if I can be the one to help, well that is good, but next time it could be you that helps and that will be good too.” Always do what you can to help. And if you think someone is laughing at you, look away. Look away. You’ll save them all some day, she said.

And now I will. I look to you, artificial heart. I look to you and I hope you know how to beat endlessly like I taught you. Because I’m going to make a million of you, and then another million, and another. Anyone who wants you, can have you. Anyone who feels weak will be made strong by your comforting weight and your life-saving pumping. You will be the circulatory saver of this world. But right now, I’m the one in need of your help. I’m the weak one, the sick, the damaged, the other. I’m the kid with the torn jacket, except the jacket is a heart.

Tomorrow, they will crack my chest open and put you inside, and then I will never need to be afraid again.

5.

DOCTOR X
They say it’s like riding a bicycle, you never forget how to perform surgery. But I’m not sure they were talking about those of us with brain damage. We’ll have to see, just have to see. My hand seems to know what to do. Sometimes the hand knows things the brain doesn’t and we should just trust the hand. Now we make the incision. How about there? That seems to be a good place for a heart.

I don’t have to think when I’m working. I can just slide into the moment, escape into the process. Surgery is a kind of escapism. You can leave your self behind and cut cut cut. It makes me wonder if my self is still here. Maybe I was never lost. Maybe I was always here, just waiting to pick up a scalpel. It feels good. I’ll say that. It feels good. Sleep, now, sleep. I owe you that.

CLOWN BAR

1.

DUSTY
My cat died last week. Thirty seven years old and died falling off the counter. She was dead before she hit the ground I suspect. I still haven’t buried her. I’m too sad about it. I just stuffed her in the freezer and now whenever I want a popsicle, I see her and I start crying again. On top of that, yesterday, I was sitting on my couch and I noticed a tear in it. I should probably get some thread and stitch it up. It’ll just get bigger if you don’t do something about it. You know what they say, a stitch in time . . . something something. Something about stitches. But it applies universally. To all ways of fastening things. Like pull up your zipper now or you’ll be cold later. Or take the antibiotics now before you giveit to other people. Or like, go to rehab before you OD on cough syrup or PCP or whatever. Or like, take care of your mama. My mama’s doing okay. In fact, I was having a pretty good day if I wasn’t thinking about the cat or my couch. But then Shotgun shot me in the foot. I’ll probably get gangrene. I’m hoping the burlesque show might cheer me up. Hey what are you guys doing?

NERVE

1.

ELLIOT
Thanks. I just don’t want to come off as fragile or something. Just because I don’t like roller coasters. I mean to say, I function in this world. No, I guess, not all the time, like there was a while when I just wanted to crawl under my bed and spend the day there but I was really unhappy and I just got out of a bad relationship and had a terrible job and I just

hated my life. And yes I guess I still do have panic attacks sometimes and suddenly am afraid my hand is going to fall off or that I’m going to stop breathing and I freak out but then I realize I’m still breathing and I’m probably not going to suddenly die and I’m OK. I suppose I thought for a long time I would be dead by now like in some horrible plane crash or car crash or like a stray bullet and I would be dead by like twenty but here I am and I’m not dead. So what I’m saying is that I’m, you know, pretty healthy now, not depressed or anything and I’m not like a daredevil. No, I don’t have tattoos or piercings and I’m not going to drive a steel rod through my head, but I’m not going to curl up on your couch and cry or anything.

PRETTY THEFT

1.

MARCO
I learned early that if something is pretty it must be wrong. Or it made me do things that were wrong which was the same thing. It’s not my fault there is beauty everywhere.

Because when you look at something beautiful, it takes a little piece of your soul away. But you can’t just let that happen. You have to do something. So you take the beautiful thing and run, because you think that will make you feel better but it doesn’t help. It makes it worse somehow but what else can you do? You have to try to grasp it. You have to hold something like that in your hands. And when it takes from you, you have to take back. You can try to stop, but . . .Why aren’t you drinking?

2.

JOE

Some people get locked up and some people never do. If you try to kiss the staff they will lock you up. It is illegal. Many men in suits never go to jail. That’s because that’s because that’s because they aren’t me. They aren’t broken. They walk on the surface of the water while everyone else is stuck in traffic or your car breaks down. Their cars never break down. They are super untouchable. They get married they have wives and children because they are men that are not born broken. They are the people who are up on the big screens. They are on the TV on the radio in the newspaper because they are the chosen the good, the other people. They can kiss whoever they want or kill even. Even kill. Because they are uncatchable or they are forgivable or they are perfect. They have people lying to help them. Their mothers loved them and told them so. Their mothers helped them up the stairs. Their mothers had a lot of money and a lot of good things in their bodies that they passed on while they lived in their good homes. They were beautiful and rich and were friends with all the people you are supposed to be friends with. Like doctors who can lie for you. Like doctors who can fix you. Except they don’t need fixing. Not the super untouchable. They have legs like razors and eyes that magnetize. They are pretty. They are everything. Like Allegra. I wonder if Allegra is super untouchable.

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Published on November 01, 2014 09:40

October 27, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 704: Herman Daniel Farrell III

Herman Daniel Farrell III

Hometown: Washington-Heights, New York

Current Town: Midway, Kentucky

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I just finished a new play Cousins Table that's set in a post-war suburban home in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Members of a multicultural family (black, white, latino) who have not gotten together since falling out over 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, re-convene over Thanksgiving weekend in order to visit with a dying relative and determine the distribution of the family estate. The disputes between family members mirror the current divisions in the U.S. The issues of disintegration and secession -- are on the table.

I'm now turning to research and outline work on a piece about Thomas Dixon and W.E.B. DuBois and their confrontation in the first half of the last century. Dixon was the author of the novel The Klansman that was adapted for the screen as Birth of a Nation. The noted scholar and civil rights activist DuBois was also the author of a huge pageant play (cast of 100s) The Star of Ethiopia that was meant to be a counterpoint and response to Dixon's inflammatory work. Johns Hopkins and Columbia University will also factor into the narrative, as centers of intellectual thought (the Dunning School) that reinforced racist interpretations of sociology and history. And Margaret Mitchell will be in there, too, since she modeled Gone With the Wind on Birth of a Nation, sans Klan outfits, but as a child, actually donned (and sewed!) the dreaded hoods when she staged her own adaptation of one of Dixon's Klan-loving novels, in her living room. All true.

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A: I was in the Boy Scouts in the late 1970s and I was exposed to two racist incidents. My dad is black and my mom is white and I look white -- so the racists who were mouthing off (no violence) had no idea that they were talking to anyone other than white people. I came away from those moments with a better understanding of the insidious and hidden nature of racism in contemporary America. As a writer, I am fascinated with moments that transpire behind the scenes, that are not meant for public consumption, but reveal the truth about a particular issue or character. In my play Bedfellows, I took the audience behind the scenes at a local political convention and in the HBO Film Boycott, we revealed the internecine battles that Dr. King had to deal with during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: The business model. The not for profit corporation does not work as a sustainable economic model for the vast majority of theater artists, notably, actors, directors, designers and playwrights. That's a plain old undisputed fact. Now, there are two elements at work here: 1) not for profit; 2) corporation. The not for profit element was meant to discourage commercialism but that objective has been jettisoned by most NPC theatre organizations over the past two decades. So why not lose the idea completely and return to a for-profit model that includes profit sharing amongst the artists? It worked for Shakespeare's and Moliere's companies and many theatre producing organizations across the globe well into the 19th century. And the corporate structure should also be rejected in favor of partnerships (it works for doctors and lawyers!) or cooperatives. Again, returning governance and decision-making to artists, working together collectively.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Eugene O'Neill, Hallie Flanagan, Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Joe Papp, August Wilson, Lloyd Richards, Max Wilk, Tommy Hollis, Sarah Kane, Howard Stein, Ed Vassallo.

Among the living: Reed Birney, James McDaniel, Kevin Geer, Phyllis Somerville, Lori Tan Chinn, Joe Urla, Amy Saltz, Tom Aberger, Alice Haining, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Doug Wright, Joe DiPietro, Doug Post, Peter Jay Fernandez, Lucy Thurber, Paula Vogel, Chris Durang, Chuck Mee, Catherine Filloux, Arthur French, David Margulies, Kia Corthron, Lynn Cohen, Akili Prince, Willie Reale, Todd London, John Steber, Emily Morse, Joel Ruark, Ron Riley, Casey Childs, Woody King, Jr., Chris Fields, Douglas Turner Ward, Jim Nicola, Jim Simpson, I'm probably missing a dozen more.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Anything I haven't seen already. But also anything old made new again. Most of all, I love moments that can only happen in the theater -- humans on stage connecting to humans in the audience, that moment of grace.

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: Read plays and go to plays. When you like a play you saw, go get a copy of the play and read it to figure it out, on your own, how the playwright constructed the work. You can and should be your best teacher. That in mind: never, no matter how far you come along, think: "I got this." Be ever curious and humble. Every good playwright I've ever met says: "I'm still figuring this out."

Send plays out, but don't wait around for the response, write the next one, self-produce or form a playwrights collective.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Alum Reading of Cousins Table at New Dramatists http://newdramatists.org/

on Thursday, December 18 @ 7pm.

Website: www.hermandanielfarrell3.com/

The Lesson by Ionesco, directed by Nancy Jones @ Slant Culture Festival in Louisville, Kentucky, November 14, 16 & 21 http://www.nancycjones.com/#!theatre-farouche/ci0x

Derby City Playwrights: https://www.facebook.com/derbycityplaywrights

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Published on October 27, 2014 09:00

October 17, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 703: Forrest Attaway

Forrest Attaway

Hometown: Gun Barrel City, Texas

Current Town: Kansas City, Missouri

Q: Tell me about Columbus Day.

A: Columbus Day was originally written as a one act play back in 2006. In that version it was more of an experiment in tone and rhythm, a sort of language piece that explored two separate plot lines with a very strong lyric prose element. The first story; a History/English teacher at the end of his rope decides to hold his classroom hostage with a shotgun. The second story; a young woman with a history of physical, sexual and drug abuse fights for her unborn child. The stories were meant to move independently of each other in opposite directions but also maintain oddly familiar courses of action.

I had always felt that there was more to the play than just a pretty piece of prose so I recently built in a second act connecting the stories. The play now follows the young woman’s journey as she fights for custody of her unborn child against the father as well as Child Protective Services in the state of Texas. In the second act it is revealed that the teacher from the first act was her lover and that she is the reason he walked into the classroom with a shotgun.

The theme of the piece is very much “The inevitability of the human condition and that people never really change”

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I am currently writing the book for a new musical called “LEATHERFACE, the Texas Chainsaw Musical” due to open late spring if legal can get their act together. I also have a piece on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder entitled “Little Atlas”

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A: I grew up in a small town in East Texas. My family consisted of blue collar workers and white collar government contractors. So my youth was inundated with hauling hay in the summer or afternoon classes with my grandmother drilling the benefits of social etiquette into my rambunctious brain. During my years at school I never really sat at the same lunch table, I didn’t have a set group of friends. So even though I stood out among my peers, I was very much an observer. I feel this is where my need to tell other peoples stories came from.

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: I feel the establishment of the regional theatre in this country hurts us more than helps us. I feel we need to find a way to franchise the smaller venues so that live art is more accessible to the masses. It would employ more artist and drive ticket prices down to a more affordable cost.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: DEAD AND GONE I have to go with Cliff Odets, August Wilson, Romulus Linney
ALIVE AND KICKING I would say Will Eno, Albee, McNally

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I have become a fan of the “found” theatre spaces. Don’t get me wrong, I still like comfortable chairs and cocktails, but there is something very exciting and voyeuristic about watching a story unfold behind a gas station or in the basement of an old warehouse.

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: Playwriting is an exercise in patience, from the time an idea is born to the time it hits the stage may seem like an eternity. But I have learned things in this profession are exactly as long as they need to be. That goes for your work too; if you can describe your play in a paragraph, then it only needs to be a paragraph long.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: “Columbus Day” is premiering at The Living Room Theatre though the month of October in Kansas City MO Check out the website Thelivingroomkc.com

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Published on October 17, 2014 07:54

October 16, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 702: Vicki Lynn Mooney

Vicki Lynn Mooney

Hometown: Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma but raised in Oklahoma and Kansas at-large. My father was an oil field worker, so I was always the new kid in school, sometimes more than once a year.

Current Town: My husband, Gerry Mooney and I, have lived in Dobbs Ferry since 1986. It a lovely village on the Hudson River with great access to NYC.

Q: Tell me about Broken Heart Land.

A: Broken Heart Land (in Cherokee: Uyotsohi Adanvdo Gadohi) is set in Tulsa, Indian Territory, 1903. It is the story of Alma Wimsey, the 13-year-old daughter of a Cherokee father and white mother who rebels against an arranged marriage and reclaims her Cherokee heritage.

Although I wrote Broken Heart Land first, it is the second play chronologically in the Broken Heart Land Trilogy. The first play of the Trilogy is Hoop Jumper (1900), the second is Broken Heart Land (1903), and the third will be Thicker Than Oil (1920). The Trilogy explores the period beginning in the late 1880’s with the enactment of The Dawes Act* the largest land grab of Native territory in US history.

In early Tulsa the Creek, Cherokee, and Osage nations intersected at the Arkansas River. Both full bloods and mixed bloods of all the tribes lived and worked together, worshipped in the same churches, and were buried side-by-side in unsegregated graveyards. All that began to change when the railroad came to town. After the railroad came the promise of statehood and with that came the first and only census based on blood quantum, namely the Dawes Rolls. All the stories reflect the truth and struggles of the native people living in that time. Although he family in the “Broken Heart Land” Trilogy is based, in part, on family history it is fictional because I wanted to explore the larger social and political issues in play in the years leading up to statehood and beyond.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I have two projects in progress now, both of which I am writing with Eagle Project members in mind. “Tartan Thread” is the story of a young Scot who is transported to America in 1747 for the political crime of wearing his clan tartan after the Proscription Act. He marries a Cherokee woman and introduces her clan to literacy, which in turn, spreads like wildfire and is avidly adopted by the tribe.

The second project will be Thicker Than Oil (in Cherokee: Sidonelahi: My Whole Family) which is the third play in the “Broken Heart Land” Trilogy. It will be set in Tulsa, 1920, after the oil boom but before the infamous “Greenwood Massacre,” recorded by history until just recently as the “Tulsa Race Riots” in which the Black Wall Street was bombed and burned to the ground.

Thicker Than Oil is still a work-in-progress, but it will look at the expectations that people, both white and native, had of the Dawes Rolls at the time. There was a big difference between the benefits being promoted and what they actually received.

I will also be going to Oklahoma in May, 2015 for Hoop Jumper which was selected for full production in the 2014 Native American New Play Festival at the Oklahoma City Theatre Company in Oklahoma City, OK, this year. Hoop Jumper, the first play in the Broken Heart Land Trilogy, is set in 1900. It is the story of Alma’s Cherokee father (Weli) who, by going against the full-blood culture in which he was raised and signing up for the Dawes Roll at the insistence of his white wife, loses respect in the native community.

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A: Every person in my family is a storyteller. Some are just flat-out liars, but we all can tell a good story. We would sit around in the evening, often on the porch to catch the breeze, and everyone would share a story. My great-uncle Austin played guitar and harmonica at the same time and everyone joined in singing. How that affected me as a writer is that I have a good feel for structure in telling a story.

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: More accessibility and more opportunity, please, for everyone everywhere!

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Early influences were Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, William Inge, Eugene O’Neill, Frank D. Gilroy – I could go on….

My theatrical heroes today are the men and women who are working hard to bring voices to American Theatre that are almost never heard. Through Eagle Project readings, it is evident that there is a hunger to know more about Native Americans. I’ve been a supporter of the Eagle Project since the day I met Ryan Victor Pierce (Founder and Artistic Director). The reason is in their mission:

“It is the goal of Eagle Project to use the performing arts to engage America in dialogue about what it consists of and what it stands for.  Having been largely based on the democratic ideals of its indigenous people, the US has inspired people from all over the globe to call its shores home. It is this unique mixture of culture, and how that defines the intersection of class and race, that Eagle Project seeks to investigate. All the while, however, making sure to pay homage and respect to Native Americans of all tribes, our fellow citizens, who started it all.”

The Eagle Project’s first production, Wood Bones by William S. YellowRobe, Jr., was a beautiful first realization of the Eagle Project mission. My hope is that Broken Heart Land will help them take another step forward.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Recently, everything Native American, especially plays by my sister playwrights, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Vicki Ramirez, Larissa FastHorse but I am inspired every time I hear native voices in the theatre. I always learn something new.

The shows that stand out for me are everything I’ve ever seen by Girl Be Heard (Jessica Greer Morris and Ashley Marinaccio, co-founders). GBH is an amazing troupe of young women who write their personal stories and then perform all over the world. Dominique Fishback (GBH alumna) and her one-woman show, Subverted, will next appear in 2014 ABC New Talent Showcase on October 7, 2014. Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle at The Public. The work of Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj (Little Rock, Salome: Da Voodoo Princess of Nawlins, and The Removal Project) with his highly polished Rebel Theatre Group and outstanding choreography by David Norwood. King of the Hobos by multi-talented Jara Michael Jones just recently closed but reopen in 2015. And of course, the Amerinda premiere of PowWow Highway adapted by William S. YellowRobe, Jr., from David Seals novel of the same name, currently playing at HERE!

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: Write what fascinates you, write what means the most to you, and don’t give up no matter what. Keep writing! The only thing that will defeat you for sure is if you quit.

Q: Plugs, please:

A:
www.eagleprojectart.org
http://www.publictheater.org
http://www.amerinda.org
https://www.facebook.com/RebelTheater
http://www.dominique-fishback.com/subverted-original-one-woman-show.html
http://nytheaternow.com/Content/Article/king-of-the-hobos

* The Dawes Act Started the Last and Largest U.S. Land-Grab of Native Territory Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts (1816–1903) was a firm believer in the civilizing power of private property. He once said that to be civilized one must “wear civilized clothes, cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey [and] own property.”

His faith in that premise was so strong that he sponsored federal legislation in the 1880s to “civilize” Indians by giving them individual allotments of land. The consequences were disastrous. His legislation broke up communally owned tribal land that had guaranteed every tribal member a home and almost destroyed Indian communities, traditions and culture. It dispossessed Indian nations of almost a million acres of the land that had sustained them since time immemorial. It also opened up Indian land for white European settlers eager to fulfill the mandates of Manifest Destiny—a 19th century belief rooted in the Christian Doctrine of Discovery that American citizens had a God-given right (and obligation) to possess all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

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Published on October 16, 2014 09:00

October 14, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 701: Teddy Nicholas

photo by Jody Christopherson

Teddy Nicholas

Hometown: Elmhurst, Queens, NYC

Current Town: Harlem, NYC

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Currently I'm writing a new play called Reservations that follows the story of Tom, a young gay man in New York, who goes on a series of first dates in attempt to connect with others and himself. It covers a lot of topics including pop culture, family, identity, suicide, drug abuse and mental illness. I am writing a scene a week and debuting each scene at Crazytown Blog.

I'm also working on a horror play called Found Footage. It's about undergraduate theater students who disappear doing site-specific research at an abandoned mental institution in upstate New York and seven years later, their research materials are found and staged by an emerging theater company in New York.

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A: When I was eight years old, I was throwing garbage out in the incinerator room in our apartment building in Queens. The door to the incinerator room had a sharp jagged edge at the bottom of it and when I turned to leave the room, the sharp edge tore straight through my left achilles heel. When I looked down and saw the red of blood, the yellow of fat and the crisp white of bone, I blacked out immediately. When I woke up, I watched in horror as a doctor was stitching me up. My mom and a nurse had to hold me down because I began to scream and freak out. Now there's this scar where you can see the imprint of stitches. A few days later, when I came back to school, my teacher told me the Greek story about Achilles and how he was the great warrior but he had this one tiny weakness which was the same spot that my wound was. And I felt like I had this strange connection to the past but I was able to survive my wounds. And whenever I think about how I am a vulnerable human being with flaws and weaknesses like everyone else, I think about that scar and how I carry this survival instinct with me always.

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: The lack of diversity on stage and in stories, particularly the lack of female playwrights on Broadway.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Young Jean Lee is hands down my hero. I had the honor of stage managing The Shipment for a year-and-a-half, and I learned more from this experience than I did in my entire college career. Also, my sister Leah Nanako Winkler who continues to nurture, inspire and challenge me since we met eight years ago.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Theater that is adventurous, experimental, challenging. For instance, I will see anything 600 Highwaymen does. They are my favorite theater company right now; their color-blind/cross-gender casting should be the standard of every theater. I also love everything I've seen by Toshiki Okada, Morgan Gould & Friends, Dave Malloy, Hoi Polloi,

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: I'm just starting out myself really. I've only self-produced my own work; no one has (yet) produced my work. So my advice would be to not wait for anyone to come knocking on your door to do your plays. Do them yourself. Who cares if they're not perfect or if you think they suck or if they're not ready? Just do it. You'll learn so much from failing than you will from doing absolutely nothing. And see as much theater as you can--and all kinds of theater. Go downtown. Go uptown. Go to Brooklyn, Queens. Get out of New York. Take writing workshops if you can afford it like the Flea's Pataphysics workshops, or if anyone ever offers free ones. I've taken two free workshops at Soho Rep that were really great; and Prelude just had one that was maybe the best workshop I ever had. And, of course, just write and write and keep writing even if you don't have time or you don't think it's any good or you don't have any inspiration because as long as you keep writing, it'll stay in your muscles and you'll work them out until they're strong as hell.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: I have nothing upcoming (*but I totally could make a show like tomorrow at any theater hint hint wink wink) so I'll just plug shows I'm excited to see or ones I've seen and loved: 600 Highwaymen's Employee of the Year at FIAF; Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men at the Public; Dave Malloy's Ghost Quartet at Bushwick Starr (so good, seriously); Ivo van Hove's Scenes from a Marriage at New York Theatre Workshop and anything at Under the Radar Festival, COIL. Also, omg, I just realized there won't be an Other Forces festival this year because Incubator Arts Project closed (RIP) and now I am filled with sadness.

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Published on October 14, 2014 08:02

October 12, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 700: Benjamin Kunkel

Benjamin Kunkel

Hometown: Eagle, Colorado

Current Town: New York City

Q: Tell me about Buzz.

A: In genre terms, Buzz is a mix of tragedy, comedy—even slapstick comedy—and also surrealism and horror. I’ve sometimes said the play is about global warming or environmental decay. And it is. But you could more accurately say that it’s about the disjunction between private domestic life, on the one hand, and great public and universal issues, on other hand: issues like climate change, capitalism, and, well, death. Which may make the play sound much heavier than it is. It’s a comedy throughout, even when it’s other things. The characters spend a lot of time swatting at flies, which may represent the themes I’ve mentioned or, at other times, may not signify much of anything.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: The main project is what I’m somewhat embarrassed to call a political treatise. I’ve also got a novel on the back burner.

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A: No one story comes to mind. But I grew up outside of a small town in western Colorado: no movie theater, certainly no theater theater, no record store, no internet as yet. So culture as such seemed to consist largely of the books on my parents’ shelves and my own books. Plus my mother and father both studied literature in college and referred to it with a kind of offhand reverence that must have encouraged me to take the written word seriously. I never saw plays as a kid, which may be why it struck me as such a revelation, later on, to see what actors can do with words that are already pretty good on the page.

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: I wish plays were cheaper and—partly as a result of that—more abundant. Other media (books, film, recorded music, et cetera) are cheap enough that people feel free to consume a lot of the stuff and to be adventurous in what they try and passionate in their judgments. Whereas when you go to the theater, too often you’re paying so much that you’re afraid to take a risk and instead go see some reliable old warhorse of a play. And then you may not even feel free to hate it when it sucks. After all, it set you back a lot of money. And that’s when people feel like it’s worth spending their money on theater tickets at all. By the way, this is one reason I favor bare-bones productions. If you want a sumptuous spectacle, go to the movies.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: I’d rather let people who see the play guess who they are. And I think if you see Buzz it’s not too hard to make a correct guess or two.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I like theater that can only be theater, plays that are content to be plays and don’t seem to wish to be TV episodes or movies. I like it when theater embraces its relative poverty of technical means—in terms of scenery, costumes, furniture, number of characters, et cetera—instead of seeming to hanker after the luxuriance of TV and film. And one reason I like this is that I think plays can do a better job than any other medium of showing how people live inside symbols, half-formed ideas, and stereotyped situations—abstractions from reality, in other words—at the same time that they’re absolutely flesh-and-blood and real. Theater can be good, simultaneously, at both abstractness and tremendous concreteness. And I like when it recognizes this about itself.

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: I’m just starting out myself. So I’m probably more in need of advice than I’m able to dispense it.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Lots of people saw Will Eno’s Realistic Joneses. But I don’t know too many people who have seen or read his Middletown, which is just as brilliant and maybe even better: a twenty-first century version of Our Town at the same time that it’s completely its own thing.

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Published on October 12, 2014 07:00

October 11, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 699: Cody Daigle

Cody Daigle

Hometown: Lafayette, Louisiana. Heart of Cajun Country.

Current Town: Willington, CT.

Q: Tell me about In The Bones.

A: In The Bones began as a one-act for Manhattan Theatre Works' "ReWorks: The Spanish Civil War," an evening of plays inspired by artwork from the Spanish Civil War era. I chose a poem by Miguel Hernandez, "Everything is filled with you." The ending, particularly -- "everything is filled with you, / with something I haven’t found, / but look for among your bones." -- triggered ideas about unexpected loss and the way we deal with it. So the one-act version looked at a family dealing with the suicide of a son (a veteran of the war in Afghanistan) and the unwelcome visit of the boyfriend he left behind.

The one-act evening happened, but the family of In The Bones wouldn't let me go. I was interested in how they might, over time, integrate this seismic loss into the fabric of their lives. So I expanded the play, moving each scene forward one year, charting the changes. And these other ideas came bubbling up -- the changing face of the South and its evolving relationship with gay rights, the real need for marriage equality in these socially stalled parts of the country, and our relationship with technology (The play contains several video interludes, filmed by the son who committed suicide, which serve as a kind of document of the life they all led before the suicide).

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I'm working on two new plays right now. One is called The Bottom of the Sea, and it imagines Tennessee Williams, post-opening of the "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" film, holed up in a seedy New Orleans hotel room, furiously working on the film script for "The Fugitive Kind." Williams is upset about the removal of the homosexual themes in the "Cat" film and is creatively stalled. Anna Magniani, Meade Roberts (his collaborator on the "Fugitive Kind" script) and a beautiful young man named Arthur swirl around him as he works. The play looks at how closely identity and creativity are tied together, and at the necessity for representation in art -- not just for the audience, but for the artist as well.

And I'm working on a show called Cuddleman, which is about a company that trains people to be professional non-sexual cuddlers for those in need of physical reassurance. Although apparently there's now an app for that, so... we'll see what happens there.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: The standard answer here for me has always been Tony Kushner. I met his work at that formative moment when the lightbulb is going off, "Oh yeah, I know! I wanna be a playwright!" I was in that moment, and I encountered "Angels in America." Completely changed the way I saw plays and what was possible on stage. And it gave me -- a still-closeted gay boy in south Louisiana -- permission to own my identity as a gay man and permission to tell stories about it.

Lately, I'd have to say my theatrical heroes are the wonderful people who put on the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. I've been a playwright at the conference for the last two years, and it's been such a gift. The courage to tackle the full-length version of In The Bones came out of my first conference experience. It's an inspiring, challenging, warm and wonderful week in the Midwest. Everyone should go.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I'm going to defer to Tennessee Williams here, since he's on my mind lately.

"The color, the grace and levitation, the structural pattern in motion, the quick interplay of live beings, suspended like fitful lightning in a cloud, these things are the play, not words on paper, nor thoughts and ideas of an author, those shabby things snatched off basement counters at Gimbel's."

That's the kind of theatre that excites me. No matter the package. You can find "lightning in a cloud" in a devised dance-theatre piece or in a really cracking production of Ibsen. That flash of life inside the artifice of theatre -- that's always what I'm hoping to find.

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: Don't wait around for some theatre to do your work. If no one's producing your play, produce it yourself. While we all love sitting at the computer and hashing out rewrite after rewrite, you don't really learn what it feels like to be a playwright until you're seeing your play in the rehearsal room and in front of an audience. So, make those opportunities. You learn so much. And while it may not be Steppenwoolf or Broadway or any of the other brass ring theatre opportunities, your play is being heard. Your play is being seen. There's value in that for you. There's value in that for your audience. So do it.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: In The Bones is being produced by the Astoria Performing Arts Center on November 6-22, 2014.

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Published on October 11, 2014 09:00

October 10, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 698: Carol Carpenter

Carol Carpenter

Hometown: Artesia, New Mexico

Current Town: I live between Madrid, New Mexico & NYC

Q: Tell me about Sweet Sweet Spirit.

A: Sweet, Sweet Spirit is the name of a popular church hymn in the Southern evangelical tradition. The play is about a conservative family in West Texas that have to ask some really hard questions of themselves and each other after the father beats his gay son to near death. He's facing trial, has disgraced his respectable family, and has left them with the overwhelming task of figuring out who should raise the kid in his final teen years. It's about the complexities of faith, culture, family and community in a rapidly changing world.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: My newest play The Guadalupe was part of the New Play Workshop at Chautauqua this summer under the direction of Ethan McSweeny, and we are continuing to work together on it now. It’s about a farming family on the border who get involved in the cartel wars. It’s a thriller, very plot-oriented and suspenseful. Ethan calls it a “blockbuster movie play,” which is a good way of describing it.

I’m also in the conceptual stages on a new play that will be set in my hometown of Artesia, New Mexico. Artesia is the one town in New Mexico that is housing Central American refugees. As you might imagine, it has sparked the same kind of populist outcry that is happening in other refugee towns across the country. This is in sharp contrast to how I remember my hometown thinking about Guatemalan children in the 1980s. Growing up, my parents and their church friends often spent their vacation and working-class dollars volunteering at an orphanage in the southern jungles of Guatemala. My Dad’s job was to build bunkhouses for children of the disappeared, while my mother served as a dental assistant by filling cavities and pulling teeth. When they would return from Guatemala, our house would fill up with all of the people who had gone on the trip, and with their children, who were coming to see the big slide show of their journey. This was very exciting for us kids. My Dad would click through all the slides, and the adults would tell stories about each of the children in the photos – how their parents died, what pictures they had drawn, what their dreams were, what candies they loved. The women would emote endlessly about which children they had fallen in love with and dreamed of adopting. At the end of the slide show, they’d begin planning how they could all find the money and time to return to Guatemala. When I put these memories against the reality of the public reactions in my town to the refugees, the relief is quite stark. Are the people who volunteered in Guatemala the same people now shouting for the refugees to be sent home? Are they a different segment of people? If they are the same people, what has changed in our culture to produce this dramatic shift? Or is it somehow different to care about war refugees in their own lands as opposed to on your own soil? If my father were still alive, I wouldn’t be surprised if we would have had a foster child in our home right now. And this is what the play will be about: a father who wants to foster one of these children against the backdrop of the family and community wrestling with the issues that play out daily in today’s political environment.

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A: When I was a kid, I would often stay with my cousins on the various ranches that my Aunt Savannah and my Uncle Vernon managed. They always lived in the employees’ quarters, which were usually very simple houses that were a hundred or so miles from towns of any real size (real size meaning a few thousand people). And there was nothing more exciting for us kids than having Uncle Vernon choose you to throw on the back of his horse and ride out to take care of ranch business. So one day I was the lucky one he chose. We rode out to look for a herd of wild horses. When we found them, my Uncle Vernon said, “If these were our horses and you could have any one of them that you wanted, which horse would it be?" And so I pointed to this beautiful chestnut horse. He told me it was a Palamino. Growing up on the border, it was easier to say “Jalapeno” than "Palamino," so that’s what I named it. As we rode back to the ranch house, he started trying to convince me to sell him my new horse. He offered me a few bucks. Then twenty. Then fifty. The more he offered, the more certainly I refused his offer. When we got home, all my cousins were waiting on the porch and came running out to hear about our ride. Uncle Vernon told them them that I’d picked the most beautiful horse in the pack and that he was going to buy it off of me. He continued to up his offer: A hundred? Two hundred? My cousins eyes got bigger as I kept refusing. He said he had one final offer to make and he walked into the house. We all followed him through the living room and down the hallway until he stopped in front of a little linen closet. He opened it up up and reached onto the highest shelf and pulled out a towel that had been rolled up tight. He sat the towel down in the hallway and began to unroll it. A sock was inside. He opened the sock and pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills. He laid them out one at a time on the floor until seven hundred dollars sat before us. I realize now that it was probably his life’s savings. He said, “I’ll give you $700 for that horse.” I said “No.” Then he picked me up and kissed me and said “That’s my girl.”

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: That it appealed to people outside of our major urban centers.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

Q: Horton Foote for his dedication to place and his belief in the goodness and potential of all people. Sam Shepard for his dedication to place and his belief in the opposite. Anna Deavere Smith for her ability to embrace it all. Lately, I really like the work of Samuel Hunter and Mando Alvarado. I love Rattlestick and LAByrinth and Intar. Beyond the theater, the storytellers who inspire me to write are Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, Charles Bowden, country and western singers, right wing nut jobs, left wing nut jobs, preachers, and populist maniacs.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I like classically structured stories about people and families for whom the stakes are very high. Stories where life and death are at play. Where culture is so strong that taboos still exist and give characters conflicts to really wrestle with.

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: Your foundation is your history, your ancestors, your place. Stand on this foundation, but listen to everyone. Crave criticism. A man on the street has as much to tell you about your play as the Columbia grad. Structure matters. Master it before you break it.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Sweet, Sweet Spirit
Running October 10-25, 2014
14th Street Y Theater
Produced by Manhattan Theater Works & Goode Productions
Tickets & Info here

Playbill article calling Sweet, Sweet Spirit one of the top-10 must see shows of the fall season by female playwrights.

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Published on October 10, 2014 05:58

October 8, 2014

I Interview Playwrights Part 697: Lane Bernes Genee

Lane Bernes Genee

Hometown: Marietta, Georgia.

Current Town: New York, NY.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Two short plays for Love Drunk and a TV pilot.

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a artist or as a person.

A: Here's an excerpt for psych evaluation of me at 7: Lane has an above average IQ but is not a genius. She is talkative and can carry on in-depth conversations with adults...she shows great empathy towards the characters in the story we've read, but prefers to make up her own stories about the characters... the stories she made up often came in song form... she is easily distracted, and expects rewards for "good" behavior.

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: First off, I try to be a nice person. Ask Morgan Gould, she said I wasn't an asshole and she wouldn't interview me for her Asshole Blog. But I gotta say I hate this Kickstarter mentality we've all got. It's bullshit. It just feels like artists asking artists for handouts, and it devalues the work. I'm not saying all crowd-funding is all bad, but f&*k you if you think I'm gonna give you $15, for Facebook shout-out, and a hug.

The SEC is working on approving crowd-sourced investing which could be HUGE for the theater. I give you $15 because I believe in your show, and think you'll sell tickets and give me back my $15 and then some.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: All of my teachers: Dennis J. Reardon (who begged me not to be a playwright), Laura Maria Censabella, Christopher Shinn, Stephen Adly Guirgis, and Francine Volpe.

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: Anne motherf$%&ing Washburn. I mean holy shit.

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: It doesn't get easier, and see a shrink.

Q: Plugs, please:

A: Love Drunk: Series 2 Sunday October 26th

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