Play a Day: Use All Available Doors

Brittany Alyse Willis

One week, seven plays.

This morning I read Use All Available Doors by Brittany Alyse Willis and available on New Play Exchange.

The story takes place on a train, part of DC Metro. It is a conceit I envy, one setting that can accommodate countless stories and characters. I have dreams of taking advantage of our own public transit system, such as it is, but on a snowy April morning am resigned to two-person dialogue, me and the boy.

DAD: My new play opens tomorrow. I am nervous.
SON: As you should be.

Seriously, that's how my eleven year-old talks. Exactly like I do.

My wife remarked this morning that I seemed unhappy. She assumes I did not enjoy the play I just read. "No," I said, "that's not it. I liked the script, I like it a lot. There are unhappy conversations, and I am dwelling on those."

Hell is other passengers.

There are also moments of magic and grace and absurdity. Any time strangers begin dancing I am happy.

Real life intrudes. It is hard to concentrate when your President just pulled his first large scale airstrike with no clear explanation or strategy. This country is a fucking nightmare.

"Dad says stories were greater than facts."

Willis's play plumbs those points of transition, because its not where people believe they are, we believe we are where we were or where we are going, in transit is not a real place. It's like what my wife calls Airportland, the theory that all airports are really one airport, you don't actually exist in reality when you are inside Airportland. anything can happen, though usually nothing ever happens.

Stasis. The waiting.

Has anyone ever fallen in love on the subway?

Play a Day: Zamboni Godot

Ayun Halliday

This morning's read was Zamboni Godot by Ayun Halliday, and available on New Play Exchange. Last night we saw Jonathan Richman at the Grog Shop, so between that, my lucid dreaming and this play, my brain is pleasantly baked with absurdities.

I am a great fan of Ayun and her work, her books, (Peanut, The Big Rumpus) her zine, (East Village Inky) and her writing and performance as one of the original members of the Chicago and New York Neo-Futurists.

Members of the Neo-Futurists have employed a technique of deconstructing classic play texts to comment upon modern issues and anxieties. In this work, Halliday's protagonists are waiting everywhere, in the emergency room, at the amusement park, at the BMV. Beckett's original is only a template for Halliday's spare and insightful examination of every contemporary indignity, or perceived indignity.

Zamboni Godot is hilarious and "100% Bechdel Test Approved!"

Play a Day: Rare Birds

Adam Szymkowicz

Yesterday, my friend Tracey Gilbert posted a review for Rare Birds by Adam Szymkowicz which is currently being produced by Red Fern Theatre. I held onto the review and bookmarked the play at New Play Exchange for this morning's reading.

This is a story of cyberbullying, the narrative is familiar -- every generation has its movies about conflict in high school -- but the tools are modern. My own children are slouching toward high school and I am not unaware of the uneasy and permeable borders between them and the outside world.

When I was a teenager, most kids sitting lone in their room would be alone in their room, with only perhaps a old-fashioned telephone to make connection with any of their peers. When my children are alone in their room, they have the illusion of privacy, but their phones and screens mean they may as well be in the middle of the street, they can be everywhere at once.

Szymkowicz presents a world of cruelty, not without its motivation, but with the violence and abuse that seems random until you understand its origins. The tale could easily end tragically without a fortunate puella ex machina which is the fantasy of every straight, teenage boy.

Reminds me of the tagline from the Mortified podcast, We're freaks, we're fragile, and we all survived. Except we didn't. We didn't all survive.

Charged.fm says Tracey is "magnificent" is the Red Fern production at the 14th Street Y in NYC, which does not surprise me because she totally always is.

Play a Day: The First Time

Tracey Conyer Lee

This morning I read The First Time by Tracey Conyer Lee. This is my first exposure to her work. Last night I was casting about on New Play Exchange and I found her solo performance Standing Up; Bathroom Talk & Other Stuff We Learn From Dad which she performed a few years ago at the New York Fringe.

I may come back to that, I guess I decided I wasn't in the mood for a solo piece? Reading all these plays is inspiring, which is the point, but I am also trying to get something down on paper myself and reading others' dialogue is helping with that mindset. What do we talk about when we talk?

One thing that struck me about this play, which focuses mainly on five individuals, it how each of them are incredibly forward, it was bracing. I remember first experiencing Death of a Salesman and while I know this is kind of the point, it was irritating, so irritating, that no one said anything they were actually thinking, or that no one was listening to each other. Each of these characters are unafraid to express what they are thinking, at that moment, and there is great energy in that.

There's a moment in this work, in a place at a time, which brought me right back to my own childhood. It made me question so much. That's where we are now. It occurred to me this morning that I knew everything when I was twenty, and how much less I know today. Soon I won't know anything at all. It is making me a better writer.

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.

Play a Day: Daughters of the Moon

Reginald Edmund

There used to be an online motivational event called Script Frenzy, much like NaNoWriMo only for screenplays and play scripts. They closed up shop five years ago, which is a pity, but not before I used the event as an opportunity to write a complete, new work in the month of April, 2012. That play was Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick).

Now, for today. I have been terrible about reading these days. Not reading enough, certainly not reading plays. So, as we enter the month of April I have resolved to read one play each day, from the ever-expanding database available at New Play Exchange.

This morning I read Daughters of the Moon by Reginald Edmund. Reggie was in town in January as a panelist at Cleveland Public Theatre for Entry Point and we had the chance to finally meet face to face and talk for a little. He is the creative force behind the Black Lives, Black Words project, which has been produced in several cities, most recently at the Bush Theatre in London.

It is not my intent to critique each of these plays, only to read them. Having said, that, Daughters of the Moon is a thrilling survival adventure, historical and poetic, with strong themes on race, gender, and empowerment. From my own perspective, this script would be an excellent educational touring production for audiences middle school and older.

Also, after a disappointing and depressing fallow period, I have scribbled my way into the possibility of a narrative that I may be compelled to investigate. So, happy first of April all around.