Tag: shorter plays

Potter, a man, sits in a large chair and Jasmine, a woman, is at a small desk as we hear the sound of rain falling in So This Is The Elephants’ Burial Ground.  Potter comments on the heat and suggests that Jasmine could take off her clothing since they are “way out here in the bush” with no one around.  Potter asks her a series of questions and is not pleased with her noncommital answers.  Jasmine says she went to the store to get bread and was told by the baker that his oven was hot.  When Potter asks her who the letter she isn’t writing is for, she says it’s for whoever opens the door.  She tells Potter that she saw a man waiting in the garden again and Potter says that she’ll probably find his bones picked clean by predators.  Potter says he was a war hero, decorated for shooting his Captain.  He says he was well liked everywhere and that he won a prize for singing.  He tells Jasmine that she adores him and asks her to bring him a book.  When she asks what color the book is he says he is color blind.  He says he wrote a book about silkworms many years ago when he was recovering from malaria and in love with a beautiful girl who played the violin.  He says the girl died by stepping in quicksand; he then accuses Jasmine of being careless and leaving three pennies on the carpet by the bed.  Jasmine says they must have fallen from the torn pocket of her coat.  Potter asks her if she tore the coat at the baker’s when he was showing her his oven and Jasmine says she is going out to the elephants’ burial ground to sing and dance naked in the moonlight.  Potter tells her she’s not going anywhere, that the baker was found burned to death in his own oven.  Jasmine says she thinks she will stay in and the light fades out as we hear the sound of rain.

In Goat, a short one-act for a man and a woman, we hear in the darkness the sounds of subway trains passing above and see a flickering fire in front of a man sitting, warming his hands.  Lil, with a flashlight, asks the man if his name is Goat.  He tells her to go away, but she says she needs him to do something for her.  He says there are snakes everywhere, that he kills and eats them and makes boots out of their skins.  He asks her why she has come to this lost place and tells her that he is here because he was cast out.  Lil says that Goat knows her husband and his brother and their father because the father is also Goat’s father.  She says things were fine until the second son came along and Goat was replaced in his father’s affections and pushed out.  The third son was Adam, her husband, the moron.  Goat says he dreams of falling into the abyss, and Lil says she dreams about the garden and wants Goat to help her get back at the father by tricking Adam’s new wife into breaking the rules and begin a “relentless chain reaction.”  She says Goat is the only one who can make the father pay for casting them out.  He can wear his snakeskin boots, she says, and we hear the sound of “something violent and terrible going by” as the light fades out.

As the lights come up on Marilyn Gets Ice Cream, a short one-act, Knees, a short, pudgy janitor in his thirties is sitting on a white wooden bench in a Tastee-Freeze in Phoenix, Arizona, on an evening in March, 1956, while Jake, in his twenties, is sweeping up.  We hear a buzzing sound which Knees attributes to beetles that can’t stay way from the lights.  He tells Jake that the pretty second-grade teacher he liked got fired for inappropriate behavior.  Knees tells Jake to call him Arthur and asks if Marilyn Monroe has been back.  Knees says that a black limo pulled up to the store and huge chauffeur got out and ordered two ice-cream cones, saying that Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Gleason were in the back seat.  Knees couldn’t see through the dark glass of the back window and tells Jake that they’re making a movie called Bus Stop.  But Knees says he will never be absolutely certain he was that close to Marilyn, and that he felt he was possibly close to establishing a relationship with Lou Ann, the teacher.  Jake says she would never have anything to do with the janitor at the grade school.  Knees says that she might be capable of deep human compassion and tells Jake she was seen screwing some guy in the coat room after school, apparently her fiance from Nebraska.  Knees complains that he can never get close to women, that they either leave like the teacher or are behind dark glass like Marilyn.  He goes on to tell of the time when he met a really nice girl in a bar, but when he went to buy her a drink, the bartender looked down at his short stature and asked if he was standing on his knees.  Everybody in the bar laughed and now he is “a fucking walking joke.”  He says he walked into the coat room and saw “the nicest girl you ever met, being fucked like a dog by some shit-kicker from Nebraska.”  He tells Jake he is going to the rodeo tomorrow and hopes that he will see Marilyn there.  He asks Jake if he is going to the rodeo and Jake replies, “I don’t think so, Arthur.”

Patty, a 19-year-old blonde, and Sharon, a 19-year-old brunette, are wearing swim suits as they sit in lawn chairs at night in 1968 in the back yard of an apartment near the Arizona State University campus in Under the Pomegranate Trees, a shorter one-act play.  They talk about playing near a long row of pomegranate trees near the athletic fields where a girl named Cindy liked to tease the boys by pulling up her skirt.  Sharon reminds Patty that she swam naked with some boys and Patty says that she was pretending to be Marilyn (Monroe).  They speak of a Mrs. Cain who, Sharon says, tried to run her over with her car because she was jealous of her relationship with Ben.  Patty says that Ben loved her and not Sharon.  Patty tells Sharon that one evening she touched Ben “there” as they were sitting under the pomegranate trees and that she knows he will never forget.  Sharon begins to cry and we hear the sound of an ice cream truck playing “The Band Played On.” Patty talks about the excitement of having power over someone and asks Sharon if she would like her to touch her so that she would always remember being under the pomegranate trees.

Rainy Night at Lindy’s is a long one-act for seven men and two women set in “a mythological delicatessen in New York City.”  There is a counter with a phone “and perhaps an old-fashioned cash register” and tables and chairs surrounded by darkness, creating the feeling of “a busy and somewhat iconic film noir city on a rainy night” in November, 1928.  In the darkness, we hear the sound of rain and wind and a tapping telegraph key as Walter Winchell, seated at a table with a round microphone, speaks to “Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea,” announcing that Arnold Rothstein, a notorious gambler reputed to be the mastermind behind the fixing of the 1919 World Series, is in a hospital fighting for his life.  The phone rings and is answered by Abe, the cashier.  Leo and Clara, the owners of the deli, speak of Rothstein, a regular customer that Clara doesn’t like, comparing him to a spider and telling Abe and Leo that they are to take no more phone messages for him.  Leo asks Clara to be quiet before she gets them in trouble, and Moe, “a big, beefy gangster,” asks if the lobster on his plate is male or female, since he only eats female lobsters.  Leo assures him the lobster is female.  Rothstein enters and asks if there are any messages for him. He asks where Damon Runyon is.  The phone rings and Clara tells Abe to answer it.  He does, listens, and says it is a wrong number.  Rothstein tells Abe that he is expecting an important call but as Leo escorts Rothstein to a table, Clara tells Abe, “No messages.”

     Ring Lardner enters, exchanges pleasantries with Abe, and lets Rothstein know that he detests him for fixing the World Series.  Rothstein says it was nine years ago and that Ring’s problem is that he wants to believe in things and gets angry when things don’t turn out the way he hopes.  Leo tries to get Ring to a table away from Rothstein and Moe.  Rothstein says that he hears a scratching sound, like rats, but that it can’t be rats because he hears the sound in other places.  Runyon comes in, exchanges insults with Ring, and is told by Rothstein that he (Rothstein) lost three hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars in a crooked poker game.  The phone rings, Abe answers, announces a wrong number, and hangs up.  Rothstein says that Abe has a tell that lets him know when Abe is lying.  Abe says he is not supposed to take any more messages for Rothstein, but when Rothstein asks him what the message was, Abe says that Humpty said for Rothstein to meet him at the Park Central Hotel, Room 349, in half an hour.

     Inez, a chorus girl, enters and tells Rothstein that she has been waiting backstage for him for forty-five minutes.  He says he has a meeting but that he’ll be right back.  She says that he’s never going to divorce his wife and marry her.  Rothstein replies that divorces are expensive and he has to pay Humpty three hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars.  The phone rings and Abe says he is pretending not to tell Rothstein that there isn’t another call for him.  Rothstein takes the phone and then says that he has to be going to his appointment.  Runyon advises him to pay the money, but Rothstein says it is a matter of principle.  Ring accuses him of giving Jack Dempsey bad olive oil before the Tunney fight and asks if Rothstein got a thrill out of ruining baseball.  Inez wants Rothstein to discuss his wife before he leaves for his appointment, and Rothstein says his wife is divorcing him because he doesn’t sleep with her.  Rothstein offers Moe his gun, but Moe thinks he should keep it, and Runyon thinks Rothstein should take Moe with him.  Rothstein insists that Moe take the gun and go to their office and pick up some money in case “the conversation” doesn’t go well.  Rothstein leaves and Inez wants Moe to follow him, but Moe says he has to do what he’s told and that he is “actually a relatively civilized individual.”  Inez ways that she will give Moe “anything” if he goes to the hotel and makes sure Rothstein is all right.  Ring tells Moe that his lobster plate has balls on it.  Leo says the lobster does not have balls and then accuses Abe of buying male lobsters.  Clara syas that lobsters don’t have balls, pops one in her mouth, and says that it is tapioca.  Inez wants Moe to get to the hotel but he leaves to get money from Eugene.  She berates the writers, blames Ring for distracting Moe, and runs out.  Ring says he knows everything is a game but that he wants the game to be fair, not fized.  Runyon tells him he’s in the wrong country.

     The phone rings, Abe answers, wrong number.  Lights down on deli area and up on Winchell banging on his telegraph key and announcing that Rothstein, found shot in the stomach at the Park Central Hotel, died of his injuries.  He was last seen at Lindy’s Delicatessen, “home of giant corned beef sandwiches, delicious apple pancakes, and the greatest cheesecake in the world.”

Part of the Pendragon cycle, Andromeda Chained Naked to Her Rock is a dialogue between Ben Palestrina, 17, and Meredith Cherry, 31, his former babysitter.  They are at Grim Lake in Armitage, Ohio, on a summer night in 1967.  Meredith suggest that they go swimming, saying that she has seen him naked lots of times.  She says she saw a painting in one of her father’s books earlier in the day, a painting of Andromeda chained naked to a rock in the fog, remembering making love in the ferns on a hillside.  When Ben asks her how she can know what a mythological girl in a painting was thinking, Meredith says that in addition to being insane she is also telepathic.  She says that she is Andromeda, waiting as a sacrifice to a sea monster that she pictures as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and reminds Ben that he asked her to marry him when he was five years old and that she said she would if he still wanted to when he was eighteen.  Ben is leaving for college the next day and she thanks him for visiting her in the hospital, saying that she would have died without him.  He says she is beautiful and that he will always love her.  She asks him if he is a virgin and then if he wants to make love with her.  It will be her going away present to him.  He says she is incredibly attractive but he doesn’t want to take advantage of her.  She says he either desires her or he doesn’t, and when he says he does want her, she tells him to give her “this,” then go away and not look back.  They kiss, “a long and tender kiss,” then look at each other as the light fades and goes out.

As William Roach at Valley Forge begins we hear wind blowing in the darkness and the light comes up on two soldiers, William Roach and his friend Cobby, huddled before a fire as snow falls.  William tells Cobby that he was sent to America to bring back a cousin, Mary Clark, who ran off rather than marry a man she had been promised to.  Cobby says he has heard the story many times and doesn’t want to hear it again.  He complains about being cold and hungry and miserable and wonders why they are marching back and forth on snow and frozen mud until their feet bleed.  William says they are fighting for freedom and that the war began over taxes.  He tells Cobby to avoid being negative, drinks from a flask, and, after some discussion, passes the flask to Cobby.  We learn that William married Mary Clark and Cobby thinks she must be insane to think that the Duke of York is her uncle.  The men talk about watching a performance of Addison’s Cato, and William tells Cobby that they will win the war by outlasting the English and then everybody will be free.  He says he doesn’t understand why Mary agreed to marry him but tells Cobby that he can meet her when the revolution is over.  He starts to give a cheer for the revolution, expecting Cobby to join him, but Cobby sits frozen, eyes open, as the snow falls on them and the lights go to black.

Ravished, a longer three-character (2m,1w) one-act, takes place in the present “or not far from there,” on a simple unit set:  DR a small wooden table with a vase full of red roses, R a bed, DL a wooden table with chairs, DC a glow like the embers of a fire, UCL some sense of a garden.  Lights come up on Lucrece, sitting on the bed, with Tarquin drinking at the DL table and Coll standing RC looking at Lucrece who is looking at Tarquin.  Lucrece speaks in phrases of a man making love to her and Coll asks her what happened to her.  She asks if the friend he sent to her, John Tarquin, has talked about her.  Coll denies sending Tarquin to their home, but Tarquin speaks to Lucrece, saying that he promised Coll that he would come to see her.  He says Coll spoke of her, of missing her.  Lucrece wonders why Coll never wrote to her, and Tarquin says that personal communications are forbidden, that he and Coll work for a private company that does things for the government.  He asks Lucrece the color of her eyes, and as they look at each other Coll says he doesn’t understand what Tarquin was doing with her.  He says there was an explosion and that he was unconscious for a while and that there are memories he can’t retrieve, but he does not understand why he would have made Tarquin swear to come and see her.  He says that whatever Tarquin told her was a lie.  Lucrece then turns to Tarquin and asks him to tell her exactly what Coll said about her.  Tarquin says that Coll showed him a photograph of her standing in a hallway by some roses and that he and Coll would sit by the embers of a fire at night, waiting, and Coll would talk about her.  Coll has moved downstage and sits by the fire, telling Tarquin about Lucrece, and Tarquin tells her that Coll was terrified that he would forget her and described her over and over so he would not forget.  Coll describes how he made love to Lucrece and Tarquin tells her that they were in a dangerous and unnatural situation and that Coll needed to talk.  She asks him why he came to see her and then asks Coll the same question.  Coll denies sending Tarquin but admits that he might have said things he doesn’t remember.  Tarquin asks Coll what he thinks Lucrece does when Coll is not there and says he envies Coll’s certainty about her.  Lucrece asks Tarquin if he liked Coll and Tarquin says that Coll had some weaknesses, that people who talk too much and who don’t pay attention and who want things they can’t have are weak.  He tells her that she wants him to touch her because she spends her nights alone but that it’s all a game, violence and lechery, and nothing satisfies.  Coll tells Lucrece that he dreamed she was naked in bed with Tarquin and woke up wanting to kill somebody. He repeats that he never sent Tarquin to her.  Lucrece tells Tarquin that she doesn’t believe anything he has told her, that he is some random maniac.  Tarquin shows her a photograph of herself and Coll tells Tarquin that she is sometimes too trusting, leaving doors and windows unlocked and walking around naked with the blinds up.  Coll tries to talk with her but feels she is waiting for some lover who will be more exciting.  Lucrece tells Tarquin that something is wrong with him and asks if the place where he has been has changed him.  She asks him if he thinks he has some kind of power over her and says that men love war because it gives them the power of life and death over women.  Coll then asks Lucrece what has happened to her and she tells him that he has come home to somebody else:  “This is the other side of the looking glass,” she says.  “You’ve cast yourself in this role, so pay attention.  Learn your lines.  All the dead people in the audience are watching.”  Coll thinks Tarquin did something to her, but she says that nothing happened, that Tarquin stayed in the guest room.  When Coll asks Tarquin why he went to see Lucrece Tarquin replies that Coll asked him to go.  He says that he and Lucrece talked in the garden until it began to rain.  Time perspective switches back to Lucrece asking Tarquin about the lack of rain in the place where he was and he says he is a kind of messenger.  Tarquin tells Coll that Lucrece may not be sane and Coll then tells her that he has seen Tarquin.  She says Coll is stupid for believing Tarquin when he said nothing happened when he visited her.  Coll asks if Tarquin raped her; she asks Coll if “a man like that” would just stop in to say hello and wonders if Coll is excited by the idea of Tarquin forcing her.  Coll takes a gun from his bag and turns to Tarquin, telling him he’s going to kill him.  Tarquin says he should go back to Lucrece and ask her what happened, and whatever she says will be the truth.  Coll begs Lucrece to tell him the truth and she repeats that nothing happened.  Coll leaves and we hear a loud gunshot, then birdsong.  Tarquin asks Lucrece if she is all right.  She wonders if he wants to come home with her after the funeral so she can kill him.  “Well,” he says, “you can try.”

There are three characters in Emotion Memory–Chekhov, Stanislavsky, and Lyka.  The simple unit set has a few pieces of furniture and represents four places:  Chekhov’s estate at Melikovo, a room in Moscow, the Paradise Theatre in Moscow, and Chekhov’s home in Yalta.  The time of the action is from 1892 to 1904.  We hear Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” being played on an old piano as the lights come up on Chekhov and Lyka.  It is evening; we see fireflies and hear crickets as the music ends.  Lyka tells Chekhov that he is good company but that he is lonely and unhappy.  Chekhov tells her of an experience he had with a young peasant girl when he was a young man in Moscow.  Lyka thinks the story is sad, but Chekhov insists it is funny.  She says that she never knows where she is with him and asks what he means when he says he loves her.  She tells him that she has been spending time with Potapenko, a married man, and wants to give herself to someone who wants her.  Chekhov thinks that she should have what she wants and, as she leaves, remarks that the fireflies flash their lights in a complex mating ritual.  “I hope they’re better at it than you are,” Lyka says, leaving as the lights fade.

     The second scene takes place in a room in Moscow early in the morning after the first (and disastrous) performance of The Seagull.  Lyka is sitting in a chair as Chekhov comes in after walking for hours in the snow.  He says the theatre is “a monstrous obscenity,” the actors “totally incompetent,” the audience “moronic,” and the critics “cannibalistic orangutans.”  He wants her to shoot him if he is ever stupid enough to write another play.  She tells him that at least the terrible production has brought out his true feelings, deep emotions that he always tries to hide.  She says Potapenko’s desertion and the death of her child and her suicide attempt were connected to deep emotions, that she at least is honest about what she feels.  Chekhov says he is sorry for her suffering, and Potapenko is a swine, but he is not going to wear his heart on his sleeve to be destroyed over and over.  She says the play is beautiful and that it is about her, the girl who loves the cynical writer who abandons her.  She tells him that the play was an act of love and that she is proud of his “amazing gift.”

      Three years later, at the Paradise Theatre in Moscow, Chekhov and Stanislavsky discuss the latter’s production of The Seagull, an artistic triumph to everyone but the author.  Stanislavsky tries to convince Chekhov that he wants to spend the rest of his life living inside his plays, that it’s “the most important thing I could posssibly be doing.”  Chekhov says that even when the play is done right it is still a betrayal of  “a poor, lost girl who was my friend and who loved me.”  “Well,” Stanislavsky says, “life is made of betrayal.  Art holds up the mirror.  Love makes us do it.  It’s completely insane.  Let’s do it again.”

     The last scene takes place at night, with fireflies, at Chekhov’s home in Yalta in 1904.  Lyka has been drinking and Chekhov tells her that his wife, Olga, makes him very happy.  Lyka tells him that he was just using her, the way all writers use people, that his words have infected her brain, that all she wants to to is drink until she can sleep.  She says that everybody is dying and that we go to the theatre while we wait.  She asks Chekhov if fireflies love and when he says he doesn’t know anything about love she suggests they sit and watch the fireflies “for a little while longer.”  They watch as the lights fade and go out.