Four shorts, loosely classified one acts, heavy and dark and deep and funny, hilarious, East Side but the bearable type with an after-theater bar where the cast will stop by for a drink, well at least some did on Friday night (Aug. 5), except for the underage girl actors (Avid Theatergoer and Family Friend: “Has anyone told you, well, I’m sure they do, but has anyone told you that you look just like Faye Dunaway? UGA: “Who’s Faye Dunaway?”) in “Carrie and Francine” http://bit.ly/p4LWwv, the winning playwright of this summer production, 17-year-old Ruby Rae Spiegel, chosen from an open competition against young and experienced alike, trenchant and wise beyond her years, and introducing Lydia Weintraub (she of the Faye Dunaway line and the delightful, talented daughter of good friends of ours) and equally gifted pal Louise Sullivan to audiences everywhere, see it if you can, it rhymes: Series A through Labor Day, you won’t be sorry, and you may even be inspired to write, because these plays are being staged as part of a one-act competition: an East Side Manhattan Fringe, Check out “Summer Shorts 5” at 59E59 Theaters http://bit.ly/dblPp5.
I wrote my first play as a grownup. Finished it last month and now I’m on to the next one. A one act. Maybe I’ll write about it here. When I get a little farther along. When it comes to art, drama is my first love. But only in the past few years have I felt the work itself take shape. Not just characters but stories too. So much of art coming out of darkness, what Henry James says, “We work in the dark, We do what we can, We give what we have, Our doubt is our passion, And our passion is our task, The rest is the madness of art.” Here’s the first bit of “You Know We Will Be Here:” A taste:
YOU KNOW WE WILL BE HERE
A play in three acts
by Larry O’Connor
CHARACTERS, in order of appearance
MOTHER (MILLIE)
FATHER (ROLF), her husband
DAUGHTER, their daughter
HOWIE, Rolf’s cousin
The play takes place in a living room that gets dingier, slowly so. There are two main characters, Mother and Father, the latter of whom has a nominal speaking part and is primarily seen in two ways: reading a tabloid newspaper and, in some extended sequences, only the projected image of his giant slippers and spotty feet are visible.
As the audience files in, the room is spartan except for Mother’s comfy chair, lined with a well-worn afghan, and old but clean and presentable hassock. Background soundtrack is a simple ditty, like an early television theme song, with a many voiced chorus singing, “You Know We Will Be Here.” Stage left is Father’s LazyBoy, where through most of Act One he is seen reclining. A less comfortable chair – not hardback – but equally old is on the other side of a ribbed throwrug. There is also a coat tree. Arrayed behind on shelving are literally hundreds of photos in all shapes and sizes, most not large enough to be visible, even by those sitting in the front row. There also is a gaily-looking bottle-shaped package in flower-design-wrapped plastic and a pink bow, beside it a thick plastic, long-stemmed wineglass and a first-generation but still-working telephone answering device; oddly though there is no phone, not that we can see anyway.
Twenty seconds before Mother enters the stage, the picture of a boy, ecstatic face, as if caught by a camera mid-ride at a carousel, looms super-size on a scrim. It is an otherworldly beautiful shot. It abruptly goes to black and Mother and Father are now on dimly lit stage. Father does not look even remotely like Son, but Mother is a remarkably similar-looking, older version of him.
ACT ONE
Mother is in an orange and black dress, oversize buttons. About 40. She is poured into the dress, big lipstick and hoop earrings. Looks great. Father is in a dress cardigan and bow tie, subdued, librarian-handsome, reading the newspaper. Not a local broadsheet, but a well-thumbed tabloid. He is distractedly paging through, stopping only for pictures of scantily clad women, of which there are many.
There is a faint knock at the door (which is on a wire, think Monsters Inc. Also onstage is an old-fashioned window on a wire).
MOTHER. Do you hear that? Do you? Come in. Come in.
*
Plays connect in ways that other forms don’t. There is something about the stage. Singing, say. Take the funniest scene in Michael Hoffman’s film, “The Last Station,” Count and Countess Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren) as cock and chicken. His cock-a-doodle-doo, antics in bed, the sheer gaiety, what my beloved one-time nonagenarian columnist, Bessie Doenges http://nyti.ms/qHdcsV wrote about one especially wondrous week, quoting W.B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium: “An aged man is but a paltry thing,/A tattered coat upon a stick, unless/Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing/For every tatter in its mortal dress .¤.¤.”
Which brings to mind a piece of dialogue between M and myself. Funny how I’ve taken on these past many months the worldview of a man’s hair product commercial, you know the one, it shows on sports channels, girls, shows an older man with a hot-looking young thing who isn’t wise to her companion’s secret, his advanced age and sapped energy level because his hair is immaculately treated with the hair product: “Live Forward,” the ad says, so yeah, I’m of the mind that I’ve nothing but time, that what will be will be and the work that is to be will be done, as long as I “Live Forward,” which was why what M had to say to me did catch me by surprise, that at times we need our loved ones to set us right, and more important, that we should heed that advice, meditate upon it and if possible change (insert Serenity prayer here; me, I’m partial to the Sinead O’Connor [no relation] version):
Me: “When it comes to work, I think I’ve got to start hitting the dartboard.”
M: “Hon, you should start by aiming for it.”
Next: Running for Your Life: Balance Beam
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