The Short Play Project: Elven Council (2020, 2026)

2020

Starting in 2019, I began writing one short play, pretty much every day. I mean, I did wrote a short play every day, some of them weren't any good so I never typed them up. But I did create a tremendous number of three or four page plays in a very brief time.

The day the quarantine began, in March 2020, I put out a call for anyone who wanted to participate in a "social distance art experiment" to make a video from one of (at this point) hundred of my short plays, which I would then edit and post. This became The Short Play Project.

Two of my friends recorded their precocious four year old twins to perform the script Elven Council. I forget the prompt, it may have been "fantasy" or "power" or anything, really. I was inspired by some of the poorly thought out plot points of certain works of fiction -- take the Horcrux (please.) I will break up my soul and place it into other things. Nothing dumb about that.

2026

Douglas Adams mocked this in one of the Hitchhiker books; Why have a dozen or so different forms of identification (bank card, passport, work permit) when you can have all of them -- and your DNA and fingerprints -- all packaged in one handy card!

Then someone steals it. Anyway, that’s the joke.

So, back in 2020, the twins put on their Elsa and Anna costumes, created a masterpiece, and the rest is history.

This week, the girls (now ten) recalled that time they made a video about an elven council and were trying to remember the details. Their mom suggested they all watch it, and so they were inspired to try it again.

The coda is entirely their own.

You can watch the entire Short Play Project here.

"Forget About Me (The Breakfast Club Play)" reading at Purple Rose Theatre Company

Next weekend, the Purple Rose Theatre Company in Chelsea, MI, will present a concert reading of my new script Forget About Me (The Breakfast Club Play) via Zoom on Saturday, July 16 at 10:30am. This reading will be directed by Rachel Keown, Purple Rose Artistic Associate, and feature Rhiannon Ragland & Skylar Causey.

This will be the first opportunity to share the work with a larger audience. The piece has only been read twice before, for a small, invite-only audience of friends and shortly after for our NEMOFA playwriting workshop in late 2020. These were also, of course, presented online.

The working title was John Bender Is the Villain, a play on the title of Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is the Villain, a contemporary (and very popular) takedown of Arthur Miller’s sainted protagonist from The Crucible.

As with that play, two generations have very different opinions about the message sent by beloved classics. In the case of Forget About Me, a mother and teenage child discuss their recent trip to the local drive-in to see The Breakfast Club. They went to a drive-in because it is late 2020 and there’s a pandemic quarantine going on.

Brief Synopsis: A Gen X Mom and her high-achieving, high school senior spend a night together at home. Cake is baked, drugs are consumed, and lines are crossed, while they debate teen movies, whether or not John Bender is the villain, and wait for that thick envelope.

So, my play is like No Exit only there are a lot more laughs, pop culture references, and they get cake.

The pandemic has been hard on everyone, the quarantine was something different. Did that actually happen? I was lucky, my work continued, I even started grad school which was easier because I did not need to travel an hour (both ways) to get to my classes. But I watched as my high school age children struggled to maintain a sense of self as events were first canceled then never scheduled.

Our eldest lost their senior year, no plays, no concerts, no special celebrations of achievement. All that time and effort, building reputation and honing their skills, to at last work alone in their room on college application projects and materials that might or might not carry them away from us and onto an uncertain future.

Then there is us, the Generation they called X,  raised in the shadow of the Boomers, our own childhoods making us very different parents with very different children. It’s funny, it’s as though the Strauss-Howe Theory of American Generations has failed its first test. The Millennials are as “Recessive” as we are, it’s Gen Z who are the new “Dominant” generation.

Or maybe that just seems to be the case in my house.

Purple Rose Theatre Company presented a concert reading of "Forget About Me (The Breakfast Club Play)" directed by Rachel Keown on Saturday, July 16, 2022 at 10:30 AM.

Seat of the Pants productions presents a staged reading of "Forget About Me (The Breakfast Club Play)" directed by Katherine Nash on Saturday, June 13, 2026 at 1:30 p.m. at Clague Playhouse in Westlake, and at 7:30 p.m. at Christ Presbyterian Church in Canton.

Prom 2021

Daughter (left) & Prom Date

Last year, as everything was shutting down, the first person to truly understand how long this all might take was our eldest. Class of 2021, they  saw all the events of their senior year vanish from their imagination, even last spring. No concerts, no plays, all celebrations, canceled. They saw all this first.

The other night an audience gathered on the lawn in front of Cleveland Heights High School to watch the first live, public performance of the school year. Middle school and high school orchestras, Including both of our children. It was a beautiful evening, for so many reasons.

Last year I wrote a short play for the class of 2020, the year of the Lost Prom. Maria Guardino Schreiner made this great recording from it. Last night, my child got their Prom, a scrap of senior year, saved.

Play a Day: A Godawful Small Affair

Hayley St. James

For Thursday, I read A Godawful Small Affair by Hayley St. James and posted at New Play Exchange.

Any play that uses a lyric from “Life On Mars” as a title must be read.

David Bowie left the earth, and everything went to shit. I’m not the first person to say that, it was a meme during the year 2016. What most do not know is that Bowie died - then my father died - then Prince died, then everything went to shit. In that order, over the course of three months. That's how things so swiftly fell apart for me.

St. James script is a pandemic play, and between their pandemic play, and my pandemic play, and surely the countless more pandemic plays out there, pandemic plays are going to be a thing, and several of them will actually be very good, and important, and even timeless artifacts, documenting a world we never thought we would need to endure.

Or to someday soon endure again. Sorry. 

St. James’ story is one of loss and longing, and the walls both real and imagined that separate us from our loved ones. I have been fortunate enough to be quarantined with a family, and one a supportive one. We respect each other, we respect each other’s walls, but also (not to crack the wind of a poor phrase running it thus) leave our doors open.

What of the new lovers who have been trapped together? And those who have been quarantined alone? It’s a non-binary love triangle that celebrates the joy of coupling, but also the ennui of sameness. Google the phrase “time passes so strangely these days.” It is a refrain in this script, but also the subconscious mantra for our time.

Who should I read tomorrow?

The Short Play Project: Quarantine Series

Yes, I have written a few short plays about sheltering-in-place. I mean, I'd rather not. I posted a tweet from theater artist John J. Caswell, Jr. that read, "No offense but I'm not going to go see a play reliving any of this."

He posted that two months ago.

But sometimes inspiration strikes and sometimes the results are enjoyable. Almost a month into quarantine I wrote Quarantine, which has been delightfully rendered by my long-time friends Ben and Pam, detailing the busy life of stay-at-home Gen Xers.

I've been catching up a lot with old high school friends on Zoom recently, and was made terribly aware of how the lion's share of my good high school memories are from the last several months of senior year. Having teenagers at home myself, I much more aware of what they are missing than what I currently am, in the form of cancelled concerts, parties, and ceremonies. A month ago I wrote Prom, to lend some perspective, perhaps, to the turns that life can take.

Finally, I have included here Giovanni, which started as a in-joke at work, but actually provides some sympathy to the much-maligned character of Friar John from Romeo and Juliet.


"Quarantine"
Performed by Ben Dooley & Pam Turlow

"Prom"
Performed by Maria Guardino Schreiner


"Giovanni"
Performed by Tim Keo

You can watch the entire Short Play Project here.