Play a Day: La Sirena

Eteya Trinidad

For Monday, I read La Sirena by Eteya Trinidad and posted at New Play Exchange.

I heard a joke recently. Three sirens sit together on a rock, singing. Some sailors sail past and say, “Hey, let’s have sex with them,” and jump in the ocean and die. The sirens don’t notice because, really. They’re just three women, minding their own business, singing together.

That’s it. That’s the joke. Get it?

Trinidad’s play revolves around the close friendship of Thelxi and Chim, and the diner where they work. The place is lorded over by two white men, the owner, Tanner, and the busboy/waiter Wyatt. It is also about art, and sexual assault, about workplace harrassment, and the uses of a sincere apology.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: The Big Fuckin' Giant

Rachel Bykowski

For Tuesday I read The Big Fuckin' Giant by Rachel Bykowski, and available at New Play Exchange.

Last year I happened to be at my alma mater for that year's new plays festival, and had the opportunity to see a workshop production of a play I had read the week before at NPX -- This Is How You Got Me Naked by Catherine Weingarten.

That was one play presented that weekend. Another was The Big Fuckin' Giant. I regret not having seen that as well, and intensely physical piece, which you can read on the page but it must be something to see.

The subject, on the face of it, is wrestling. My son began wrestling a few years ago, when he was in fifth grade. Attending matches, I began to understand and respect what is unfortunately regarded, in the professional world, as a circus. As a joke.

The simplicity of the sport. Two people could, with no equipment, play this sport. A non-violent, non-impact sport in which you grapple and manipulate your opponent until you have dominated them, put them into a position in which they cannot move. Pinned them. No sticks, no balls, no padding, The human body is the only necessary equipment, to subdue your opponent.

This is also exactly the worst way to think about interpersonal relationships. When you enter into a mindset in which every relationship is about dominance, your kinship with men, and with women, then unhealthy things can happen.

Bykowski has created a trio of men who are each sympathetic in their own way, and in turn each of their weaknesses are exposed by the others. Women are absent, though a couple are defined for us by these men, as types -- an African-American who is fetishized and feared, the aloof, white cuckolder -- and these collegiate athletes channel their aggression and worse, practice their dominance on the women they cannot understand with or on a blow-up doll named Judy.

It is an aggressively physical script, sweat leaps off the page, and one in which weakness is made apparent, targeted and taken advantage of. It is also a painfully eloquent parable for our time, or for all times.

Play a Day: Greyout

Whitney Rowland

This morning I read Greyout, a one-act by Whitney Rowland. We met in Valdez last summer, and though she made time to attended and comment upon my play I was unable to attend her reading of this play because I was in rehearsal for another reading, which was disappointing. Reading this work feels like I have taken care of some unfinished business.

A twenty-page excerpt is available at New Play Exchange.

May I ask once and for all what the hell "one-act" means? The title page said one-act and I was relieved to see that, based on the number of pages this play is indeed one act long. But theater companies around the country insist on advertising one-act festivals that are, in fact, festivals of ten-minute plays. Ten minutes is not an act.

Deep breath. Okay.

What are the consequences of bad memory, of bad wisdom, and how best to present them on stage. Going into dark places for writing is very challenging for me, because I am not sure what I will find there. Maybe I am worried I will find myself.

Unbearable horror and sorrow, leavened with seriously dark humor, just this side of guignol. Would like to have heard the comments after her reading, I would like to ask her about that.

Play a Day: Click

Jacqueline Goldfinger

Today I read Click by Jacqueline Goldfinger, which was recommended on the New Play Exchange homepage.

Plays about future technology are fascinating. We as theater artists are utilizing the most primitive of art forms to present, communicate, discuss devices and systems which do not yet exist, engaging the human imagination to fill in the gaps. CGI in film must show exactly what that world will appear like, or it fails, in theater we have no such limits or criteria.

On your imaginary forces work ... if you follow me.

Because we are not (as is the case in this text) not concerned with the technology so much as the effect it has on the human condition. The subject of this play is very troubling, as I have two adolescent children moving into the world armed and/or hobbled by such modern devices.

Ideally, our dramatic works will assist in the creation of a set of ethics, mores, rules. It remains to be seen.