Play a Day: Mama Bear

Sharon Harris Warrick

For Tuesday, I read Mama Bear by Sharon Harris Warrick and posted at New Play Exchange.

A play about women and about mothers, and also about the men who fail them. This is a prison story, three African American and one white woman occupying two cells. One of them has committed what most would consider the most heinous crime, the murder of their own child. It is the stuff of classic tragedy, recast in a modern setting, or at least, late twentieth century.

Warrick has created four distinct personalities who bounce off of each other with varying degrees of caution, and it is those moments where they feel the freedom to be honest that connections are finally made. The enemy is out there, it is not each other. This is a generous tale about the eternal sisterhood.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Bone Is For Dog; Meat Is For Man

Stacey A. Bryan

We are halfway through the month of April, which is amazing. Because what is happening? In today's play, life is decsribed as "messy and loud." At the moment it is very tidy and quiet.

Too quiet.

For Wednesday, I read Bone is for Dog; Meat is for Man by Stacey A. Bryan and available at New Play Exchange.

Reading a stack of plays every April is a journey around the world, or at least this hemisphere, something we all can use right now. Stacey A. Bryan is a playwright in St. Thomas and takes us there in this play.

So many people close to me are tormented by those voices in our heads that tell us we are wrong, what we are doing is wrong, the person that we are is wrong. Bryan's protagnist Layla has a literal person in the mirror who reminds her daily of how far short she has fallen.

It's a play with a strong message about body issues, but it's also a romantic comedy and a family drama, a poetic and earthy account about seeking perfection in yourself, and acceptance with what you eventually find.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret

Mariah MacCarthy

For Thursday I read The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret by Mariah MacCarthy and available at New Play Exchange.

Millennials got a thing about the 90s, which is totally cool and makes sense because, for those even old enough to remember, it was fun and silly and pointless and trivial. Also, they were children, and the 1990s was a sweet time to be a kid, unlike the 1970s and shut up I don't want to talk about that.

Saturday Night Live has undergone something of a renaissance lately, which has everything to do with the women and people of color, but during the 1990s it was pretty lame.

Remember It's Pat, featuring Julia Sweeney as a person of indeterminate gender? Yuks were inspired by people trying to figure out whether Pat was he or she. This wasn't a one-off either, Pat was a recurring character -- they made a feature film based on this routine.

The term "transgender" dates back over fifty years (and so do I) but it didn't come into the popular vernacular until the past decade or so, and comedy based on making fun of members of the trans community has thankfully moved into "grampa" territory.

MacCarthy's cabaret is a hilarious romp about gender fluidity, butch, douche, femme, fuckboi, a 90s retro dance party with an awful lot of real live making out. Humorous situations are mined not from folks trying to figure out who others are (although there is some of that) but who they themselves are. Some seek love, from others, from themselves. "It's complicated."

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Big Nose

Stacy Osei-Kuffour

For Sunday I read Big Nose by Stacy Osei-Kuffour, and available at New Play Exchange.

An immigrant, a woman who has come from away, from Africa, she will not leave her NYC apartment until she has had the operation to reduce the size of her ever-growing nose.

This script is close to the heart, but the playwright also has such skill with awkward conversations, misunderstandings and malaprops, physical timing and magical absurdity that reading it I kept bursting out laughing. It is hilarious, and also poignant and sweet.

They used to say that in America you could be anything you want, but what do you want do be? Our ideas of beauty and sex are so troubled and messed up, we spend time and money harming ourselves to please others instead of accepting who we truly are.

Tomorrow is the last day of April, and the final day of #NewDayNewPlay. I think I already know what I am reading. It's been an incredible month.

Play a Day: The Guilt Mongers or Los Traficantes de Culpa (for those not willing to submit to the Anglicization of our people)

J. Julian Christopher

For Wednesday I read The Guilt Mongers or Los Traficantes de Culpa (for those not willing to submit to the Anglicization of our people) by J. Julian Christopher, and available at New Play Exchange.

This is one of my favorite play titles ever. Because every classic play should have this title. Death of a Salesman could have been called The Guilt Mongers. Hamlet could have been called The Guilt Mongers. Or Oedipus the King.

Those are great plays. So is The Guilt Mongers.

A deathbed family drama, people who choose to spend as little time in each other's presence as possible are pulled together for the final moments of the head of the family; she who is mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, wife, all. No one is terribly glad to see each other.

"You are on some self-loathing shit," comments a nurse, which could be said about almost any one of them. They bounce off each other like satellites, their pain is played in the open, bitterness graced with tremendous humor, with that love and need for acceptance and forgiveness that rides just beneath the surface, even in the most congenial of families (like mine, I guess.)

The release that comes when the moment has passed, it can't be called happiness, and even relief doesn't sound right. But it is a familiar feeling and through his words and characters Christopher communicates this moment of exhalation with rightness and compassion.

Technology can be a beautiful thing. As I was reaching the conclusion, a character plays music on their phone, and without really thinking about it I found the piece on YouTube and started to play that music.