A short play for a man and a woman, Lamp Post is set in an upstairs apartment in a Midwestern college town in the late 1970s. Ben is awakened by Brittany pounding on his door asking for the Crisis Center. Ben tells her the Center is in the building next door but Brittany says she is scared because somebody is after her and Ben opens the door. Ben asks her if he should call the police and Brittany tells him that when she was walking home from the library a street lamp went out as she got close to it and then came back on after she passed. She says it only happens with her and thinks it means that psychic energy is streaming out of her head and turning the light off. Ben says she is finding a pattern in random meaningless data. She asks if he’s a writer because she hates writers and thinks the writer’s workshop is like a black hole that swallows up talent and shits mediocrity. Ben insists that she is imagining a relationship between two completely unrelated things. Brittany says she has so much stuff inside her brain that her head is going to explode. Ben opens the door but she slams it shut. When he puts his hands on her shoulders she pulls away and says she has a gun—in Pennsylvania. She sits on the bed, saying that nothing means anything, that it’s all just random. “This isn’t the Crisis Center, is it?” she says. “I don’t know,” Ben says. “Maybe.” Light fades on them and goes out.
Author: Jim McGhee
Zombie Radio
In Zombie Radio, Meredith Cherry, 17, and Jim Rainey, 18, are sitting on a sofa, facing downstage towards an invisible black and white television set. The light from the tv is the only illumination. They are watching an early thirties horror movie. He complains about her eating a peach and she says she has been getting weird cravings and thinks she is hearing radio broadcasts and has been having disturbing nightmares. She says that there are a lot of things going on all around her that she doesn’t quite understand, as if she were a radio with poor reception. She says she believes in ghosts . Jim thinks ghosts don’t exist and asks if there is any more beer. Meredith says she is the babysitter and can’t get drunk and says they shouldn’t have screwed on the sofa because the child, Ben, might have seen them. Meredith says she can almost remember being somebody else before she was born. Jim says he has to leave because he is going hunting in the morning. She tells him he would be a good father but he says he would step in front of the nearest locomotive. She says she would rather die than get rid of a baby before it was born, and she says she has to tell him something. As he leaves he tells her that she can come back as a zombie and tell him while she is eating the baby. We hear faint sounds from the movie but Meredith is listening to something else, asking the voice what she should do. We hear faint screaming from the movie and the tvlight fades out.
Glockenspiel
The three characters in Glockenspiel are Herbert, an American student, Monika, a German girl, and Frau Lowenstein, Herbert’s landlady. The set is Herbert’s room in Munich. The lights come up on Monika, in a white tennis outfit, talking with Herbert who has apparently invited Monika to play tennis (he admires her knee dimples) although he says his tennis balls are in Stuttgart and his racket is in Schenectady. He gets a bottle of schnapps from under his bed and pours a drink for her. She calls him Herman and says she is attracted to him because he is an asshole like her father. He admits he never played tennis and she kisses him. He tells her she can stay with him and says he will die if she leaves. She says she was only kissing him good-bye, and we hear a loud banging on the door. Frau Lowenstein, who is deaf, says that Herbert has a woman in his room. Herbert, desperate not to lose his room, urges Monika to hide under the bed. Frau Lowenstein comes in with an ear trumpet, saying she heard voices. Herbert tells her he is studying ventriloquism and will throw his voice so it sounds as if it’s coming from under the bed. Monika says, “Okay,” and “Thank you,” in a high squeaky voice and Frau Lowenstein says she is overcome by her feelings for Herbert and wants to go to a circus in Italy with him. She says she has never given herself to anybody since her husband died except once with an organ grinder and his one-eyed sister. Monika says she has found one of the tennis balls and sticks an arm out from under the bed. She crawls out and Frau Lowenstein says the ball is her dog’s. She calls Herbert Herman and tells him to leave. Monika says she will rent the room and Frau Lowenstein pushes Herbert out and slams the door in his face. Frau Lowenstein compliments Monika on her tennis outfit, mentioning that her knee dimples are like those of the organ grinder’s sister. Monika says that she has a glass eye and Frau Lowenstein asks her is she would like some schnapps. Herbert pounds on the door, screaming about rats, shouting that this is his room. Frau Lowenstein tells Monika her ear trumpet belonged to the organ grinder’s sister who had a very beautiful glockenspiel. Lights fade out.
Landru
The set for Landru (a very funny play) is a second-hand furniture store in Paris, 1919. (In a note following the script Nigro identifies the “actual” Henri Desire Landru as Bluebeard.) The characters are Landru, “a sinister looking French gentleman with a mustache, age 50,” and Odette,”arespectable young woman, age 33.” In darkness we hear the sounds of ticking clocks and “remembered orchestrion carousel music.” Landru, winding a clock, is talking about himself in the first and third person as the lights come up. He says that he is shocked by the sight of his mustache in the mirror and, speaking to the mirror, says, “How many times do I have to tell you? Never begin with a monologue.” He argues with himself but continues with the monologue since he is the only person there. He speaks of “Landru” as feeling that he was at least two persons, one who lived his life and one who watched and narrated, one looking in the mirrors, the other looking out from them, one the proprietor of a store, the other an “unspeakable monster.” We hear the sound of a little bell and Odette comes in. They speak of Sumatra and Landru asks why she has come into his shop. He takes some asparagus from under his arm and hands it to her as a token of his “compulsive strangeness.” She says she has come in response to his advertisement in the newspaper stating his desire to meet a widow with a view towards matrimony. Odette says her sister was seen coming into Landru’s shop but not coming out. Odette finds an elbow in the ashes of the stove and says it looks like her sister’s elbow. Landru says it is his elbow but Odette says she has incontrovertible evidence that he murders women and takes their money. Landru says that he often feels as if he is many different persons and is forced to keep elaborate records of who knows him by what name and what lies he has told to what women. He tells Odette that she did not come to see him because of her sister but because she is fascinated by him. She has come so he can kill her. He tells her he strangles his victims, then takes off his belt and puts it around her neck. When he says he envies the experience of his victims as they die, she wants to trade places and puts the belt around his neck, tightening it slowly as we hear carousel music and watch the lights fade out.
Annabel Lee
Another two-character play, Annabel Lee, takes place around midnight in the office of Reynolds, an English professor, late forties, and a student, Annabel, in her early twenties. Lights come up on Reynolds drinking at his desk.. Annabel says she wants to talk with him about her paper on Poe’s poem, ‘Annabel Lee.’ He tells her it’s late and she should go home and write her paper. She says that she was named after the poem and that the poem was an inspiration for Nabokov when he wrote Lolita. She talks more about the poem, but Reynolds says he is very tired and doesn’t care what she writes her paper about. She says she thought the poem might mean a lot to him because his daughter died recently and his wife left him. She says she thinks the narrator of the poem is unreliable because he feels guilty. She says that Reynolds is lonely and mentally undresses her in class. She says Poe died in a drunken stupor raving about looking for somebody named Reynolds, and she thinks Poe was talking to her teacher, telling him that love is stronger than anything. She says she stopped taking her medication and tells him that she knew his daughter in high school, that she wrote beautiful poetry about him. Annabel tells Reynolds to forgive his wife for sleeping with someone else and try to love somebody else. She says he needs what she needs, company, the illusion of contact. He tells her the angels will kill her if she gets too close to him, but she says, “Until then it is a poem,” and rests her head on his shoulder as the light goes out and we hear the sound of the wind.
Traven
Traven is a longer one-act for a man in his late fifties and a woman in her twenties set in a hut in a Mexican jungle in the middle of the twentieth century. We hear muted jungle sounds and a typewriter as the lights come up on Traven typing. Marisela says she has been wandering in the jungle since she fell and hit her head on a rock. She tells the man that he is a great writer whose name is B. Traven. He says his name is Croves, but she says he goes by that name when he pretends to be his own agent but Croves does not exist. She wants to translate his work and needs a definitive text. Traven says the work she’s referring to is “a massive celebration of anarchy.” He says she wants to kill Traven and that every translation is a lie. He says there is no way for either of them to distinguish reality from illusion. He says he was given a steamer trunk full of worm-eaten manuscripts by a man named Traven who sometimes claimed to have written them and sometimes insisted that somebody else wrote them. He tells her she is searching for a man with no face because she wants to be hurt and is afraid to be loved. He gives her a peach and invites her into the hut because a storm is coming. She eats the peach as he lights the kerosene lamp, telling her that “the secret to life is to learn to tell a story so well that it sounds so much like truth that nobody can tell the difference.” He says that truth is a house of mirrors and that Traven is the mad god of the worlds he creates. He hands her a knife; she holds it then gives it back. He opens the trunk and hands her some old manuscripts which she says are the unpublished work of B. Traven and worth a fortune. She insists, again, that he tell her who he really is. He says he is her father and that she is delusional. She says she remembers fragments of things but doesn’t know what’s real. He then says that they are lovers and tells her to lie down on the bed. She does and we hear the sound of thunder. She says he should touch her if her wants to, and he says her secret is that she wants to be violated. We hear rain and more thunder as she gets off the bed, saying she doesn’t want lies. But, he says, lies are the only way to the illusion of truth. He denies, with increasing intensity, being a series of people and actions and throws her on the bed, getting on top of her and clutching her neck. He accuses her of being a spy who has come to cut his throat and steal his manuscripts. He says he is a nobody and she is nothing. He tries to set fire to the manuscripts but the matches are too wet. She says she is somebody, takes the knife, grabs him by the hair and cuts his throat, standing over him as he bleeds all over the manuscripts. Well, she says, you finally got your wish, you are nobody. And, she says, her secret is that she is B. Traven and she must now begin to translate herself. We hear rain and thunder as the light fades and goes out.
Grand Central Station
We hear the sounds of a large railroad station as Juliet, 29, and Ben, 64, talk in Grand Central Station. Juliet tells Ben that the name was changed to Terminal in 1913. She explains that a station is a node in the labyrinth, a place you pass through, but a terminal is the center of the labyrinth, the end of the line. She tells him the building is a work of art that is being constantly rebuilt, like a living cathedral. She says it is a place as full of ghosts as any place in the world, a place that inspires an eerie sense of the tremendous mystery of things. She ask who Ben is waiting for but he can’t remember that person’s name. She says that she seems very familiar to him and calls him by his name, saying that she is the person he is there to meet. He asks if he is dreaming, and she says that he is among friends, that there are spirits everywhere, gathering at the terminal. And now, she says, it is time to go. We hear murmuring voices and footsteps as the light fades and goes out.
Hallucination
In Hallucination, Becky, 87, Lester, 87, and Ben, 65, sit in chairs representing, in the first scene, the front seat of Lester’s truck, in the second a sofa in Becky’s trailer and a chair in Ben’s house, and, in the third, the sofa. In the first and third scenes, Ben is in the dark and Becky and Lester are in the light, while in the second scene, Ben and Becky are in two circles of light and Lester is in the dark. As if in the truck (no steering wheel), Becky complains that her children never call her. Then she screams because she thinks she sees a cow in the middle of the road. But there is no cow. Then she screams that there is a brick road in the middle of the road, and Lester says he is going to drive right through it. Becky says she has been seeing things, faces of horrible old men and women, like a layer of reality between her and everything else. Lester says he is going to drive her to the doctor.
In the second scene, Lester eats walnuts in the dark as Ben and Becky in the light talk as if on the phone. Ben tells Becky she is not losing her mind, that the problem is in her optic nerve. She says the doctor gave her a shot in her eyeball but she wonders how she can trust her brain if she feels the hallucinations are real. She says she is a better person than she used to be, better than when she ran off and left Ben’s father. Ben says his father had phantom pain after his leg was amputated. Ben says he hears voices before he goes to sleep and when he is writing. He says Becky might learn to enjoy the experience. She says it could be like a vaudeville show in her head, except that she couldn’t control it and wouldn’t know what’s coming next. She asks Ben if she is real and he says she is. “Not for long,” she says as the light fades on Ben and comes up on Lester.
As they watch television, Becky tells Lester that Ben told her to enjoy her hallucinations. She complains that her children never call her and says she sees the red eyes of a panther in the dark. She says that everyone who loved her is dead. She says the panther is kind of beautiful and tells Lester to look at the panther’s eyes. Lights fade out.
In the Forest of Gone
The set for In the Forest of Gone is an attic with trunks, an old mirror, a bird cage, and magazines. June Reedy, 13, says that her sister, Lorry, 12, has been coming to the attic to read ever since their mother left. Lorry says she likes the book she is reading by N. J. Drago about the lost continent of Lemuria where actors go out all over the world. Lorry says their mother is insane and shouldn’t have run off leaving Ben who is only a child. She says their father hanged himself in the barn because of their mother. June says it was not their mother’s fault and that she is coming back. Lorry says she doesn’t want to be like their mother, but, she says, she sees panthers. June says she was dreaming, is not crazy, and everything will be fine. Lorry says that in the book she’s reading there’s a forest called the Forest of Gone where everybody who ever went away from you is there, but they look right through you as if you were not there. June puts her arms around her sister from behind, tells her to look in the mirror, and says that she is going to love people and people will love her and all she can do is love them as much as she can while they’re here. When Lorry asks what if she really is crazy June tells her they will be crazy together.
Verona
There are two characters in Verona, Vonnie Wolf, 15, and Pitt Rooks, 14. Vonnie reads Juliet’s “Come, night” speech as she memorizes her lines. She sees Pitt and he tells her that he knows what she is doing. He says that she thinks he’s stupid because he lives at the junkyard by the dump but he knows what she does with the director after rehearsal and he is going to tell the man’s wife. She asks him what he wants and he says that nobody sees him. Vonnie says she doesn’t know what she is doing and Pitt says he could kill the man. She says she doesn’t want him to be hurt. Pitt says either she didn’t want the man to touch her, in which case he deserves to be shot, or she wanted him to touch her which means she’s a whore. Vonnie says she’s not a whore but she knows what loneliness is. She reaches out to touch Pitt’s face but he pulls away, saying that nothing ever makes anything all right and she should not be sorry for him, ever. He leaves and Vonnie sits on the step of her back porch, working on Juliet’s lines. Pitt comes back and Vonnie says she was worried when he wasn’t at rehearsal because she thought he might be telling the man’s wife. He says he didn’t tell and she says that when the man kissed her it just happened, partly because he was so sad and partly because no one holds her. She says when she plays Juliet she is somebody. She tells Pitt she didn’t think he would kill the man. Pitt says he doesn’t know who his father is, but when Vonnie is on stage Juliet is real and Verona is real because Vonnie is not pretending like the others. He says he is not real and Vonnie says neither one of them is real. She asks if he will sit with her but he says he’ll just listen in the dark.
Don Nigro 