Playwright Portrait, Arthur Kopit, Excerpt from Wings

The Playwright Arthur Kopit, 2008

Wings

 

MRS. STILSON
 

... all around faces of which nothing known no sense ever all wiped out blank like ice I think saw it once flying over something some place all was white sky and sea clouds ice almost crashed couldn't tell where I was heading right side up topsy-turvy under over I was flying actually if I can I do yes do recall was upside down can you believe it almost scraped my head on the ice caps couldn't tell which way was up wasn't even dizzy strange things happen to me that they do!

What's my name? I don't know my name!

Where's my arm? I don't have an arm!

What's an arm?

AB—ABC—ABC123DE451212 what? 12345678972357 better yes no problem I'm okay, soon be out, soon be over storm … will pass I'm sure.

Always has.

Playwright Portrait, Tony Kushner, Excerpt from Hydriotaphia

The Playwright Tony Kushner, 2010

©pswb 2010

Photographed at the Great Hall at Cooper Union at the podium where Abraham Lincoln delivered The Cooper Union Speech on February 27, 1860

From Act IV of Hydriotaphia, or The Death of Dr. Browne

DR. BROWNE (Glaring at Pumpkin,trying to make him squirm:)

I want to be buried deep. Very deep but...not too deep. Apart from the mob, but not in a lonely place. Avoid the usual cliches, no willow trees, though I’d like a view, for summer evenings. No pine box. Flimsy. Use that urne. Toss out the previous occupant, or better yet, throw me in there with him and let us mingle. (Little pause) No markers, or, well, maybe just a little unpretentious stone. Maybe... “Here lies Sir Thomas Browne, scientist.” “Here lies Sir Thomas Browne, who made his wife miserable.” “Here lies Sir Thomas Browne, no grandchildren ... BUT A GENIUS! SHAKESPEARE HAD NOTHING ON HIM!” (He is now bellowing at Pumpkin with wild hatred and immense pride:) Or maybe an obelisk! Or a pyramid! A pyre! A sea-burial, or...

GET OUT OF HERE!

PUMPKIN

I han’t following dis, Dr. Browne.

DR. BROWNE (Great delirious newfound certainty!)

I don’t need you, wretch! I’M NOT GOING TO DIE. It isn’t... conceivable! I can’t ... IMAGINE it.

IF I DIE... THE WORLD ENDS! And... (The certainty is dissipating, the hatred of Pumpkin remains:) And we’ll have no need of gravediggers then.

PUMPKIN

Ef dat happens, Dr. Browne, I findet another job.

Playwright Portrait, Neil LaBute, Excerpt from The Mercy Seat

The Playwright Neil LaBute, 2008

with Edwin Booth as Hamlet

©pswb 2010

The Mercy Seat

Ben Harcourt: Jesus…you think I was born this way, like some cut-throat pirate of the high seas? Huh? Hell, I’m just trying to muddle through, that’s all, just muddle my fucking way through to middle age, see if I can make it that far. You like trivia so goddamn much, well here’s a little tidbit for ya…I’m faking it. Okay? Totally getting by on fumes. I put my game face on and go out there and I’m scared shitless. (BEAT) I’ve screwed up every step of my life, Abby, I’m not afraid to admit it. Happy to, actually, I am happy to sing it out there for anybody who wants to hear. I always take the easy route, do it faster, simpler, you know, whatever it takes to get it done, be liked, get by. That’s me. Cheated in school, screwed over my friends, took whatever I could get from whomever I could take it from. My marriage, there’s a goddamn fiasco, of which you’re intimately aware. The kids…I barely register as a dad, I’m sure, but compared to the other shit in my life, I’m Doctor-fucking-Spock. No matter what I do or have done, they adore the hell out of me and I’m totally knocked out by that. What kids are like. Yeah… (BEAT) And you, let’s not forget you. Us. Okay, yes, I haven’t done all that I’ve promised, said I’d do, I fuck up along the way. Alright. But I’m trying, this time out--with you, I mean--I have been trying. Don’t know what it looks like, feels to you, but I have made a real go of us and that is not a lie. It isn’t. And so then, yesterday--through all the smoke and fear and just, I dunno, apocalyptic shit--I see a way for us to go for it, to totally erase the past… (BEAT) And I don’t think it makes me Lucifer or a criminal or some bad man because I noticed it. I really don’t. We’ve been given something here, a chance to…I don’t know what, to wash away a lot of the, just, rotten crap we’ve done. More than anything else, ...that's what this is. a chance. I know it is.

Playwright Portrait, Gina Gionfriddo, Excerpt from Beck Shaw

Gina Gionfriddo, Playwright 2010

pswb©2010

a quote from the play, "Becky Shaw."

performed @ second stage nyc 2010

SUZANNA: Iraq is not your problem, Becky is not your problem...

MAX: That's right. They're not. And I make no apologies. Unless you're Ghandi or Jesus, you have a limited sphere of responsibility. You have a plot of land and the definition of a moral life is tending that plot of land--

SUZANNA: You need new material. I've heard the "plot of land" speech.

MAX: Becky Shaw is not on my plot of land! You are. And I tend my plot. I will always tend my plot.

SUZANNA: You make me sound like an obligation. Am I more than that to you?

MAX: Yes! If I didn't want you on my plot, I would rip you out and compost you. I want you on my plot.

Playwright Portrait, Christopher Durang, Excerpt from Laughing Wild

The Playwright Christopher Durang, 2010

©pswb 2010

Laughing Wild

And think about God. You know, it was nice to believe in God, and an afterlife; and I’m sometimes envious of the people who seems comfortable because they still have this belief. But I remember when everybody won Tonys for “Dreamgirls,” and they all got up there thanking God for letting them win this award, and I was thinking to myself: God is silent on the Holocaust, but He involves himself in the Tony awards?

 

- The Man in “Laughing Wild”

---

I want to talk to you about life. It’s just too difficult to be alive, isn’t it, and to try to function? There are all these people to deal with. I tried to buy a can of tuna fish in the supermarket, and there was this person standing right in front of where I wanted to reach out to get the tuna fish, and I waited a while, to see if they’d move, and they didn’t – they were looking at tuna fish too, but there were taking a real long time on it, reading the ingredients on each can like they were a book, a pretty boring book, if you ask me, but nobody has; so I waited a long while, and they didn’t move; and I couldn’t get the tuna fish cans; and I thought about asking them to move, but then they seemed so stupid not to have sensed that I needed to get by them that I had this awful fear that it would do no good, no good at all, to ask them, they’d probably say something like, “We’ll move when we’re goddam ready, you nagging bitch,” and then what would I do? And so then I started to cry out of frustraton, quietly, so as not to disturb anyone, and still even though I was softly sobbing, this stupid person didn’t grasp that I needed to get by them to reach the goddam tuna fish, people are so insensitive, I just hate them; and so I reached over with my fist, and I brought it down real hard on his head and I screamed: “Would you kindly move asshole!!!”

    

- The Woman in “Laughing Wild”

Playwright Portrait, Gregory Moss, 2010

The Playwright Gregory Moss, 2010

Orange Hat, and Grace

Directed by Sarah Benson

Portrait of Kalob Linzy, 2007

Portrait of Kalob Linzy, 2007
©pswb2010

For Out Magazine, working with photo editor Joey Tang.