Playwright Portrait, Ann Marie Healy, Excerpt from What Once We Felt

The Playwright Ann Marie Healy, 2007

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WHAT ONCE WE FELT

ASTRID

Macy

You haven’t even touched—

Look at this food:

This is beautiful food!

You never get to eat at Panet

This food will change your life //

Enjoy enjoy my dear

MACY

Change your life

ASTRID

(Pulling a kumquat out and eating it with her fingers)

You really should try one

They’re stuffed full of liquor

Like sucking a shot from a wet sock!

MACY

What did you offer Claire to entice her?

ASTRID

I shouldn’t have

It was ahem

A very unconventional contingency //

I shouldn’t have even tried

MACY

What did you offer her?

(Pause)

Playwright Portrait, Daniel Talbott, Excerpt from Slipping

Daniel Talbott,

Playwright, Actor, Dramaturge,

2006,

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SLIPPING

by Daniel Talbott

ELI

I loved him.

………

Short silence.

When we did.

When it felt right.

Sometimes.

The few times.

Beat.

It felt like kids. Like little kids.

Like eating dog food or stealing shit from a store.

Silence.

I’d think about him.

I’d think about the ocean.

About the sun.

His skin.

Surfing.

Changing behind the passenger door of his car.

Stuffing himself inside his wet suit.

His navel. His abs.

Beat.

I’d think about sharks.

The water.

How deep it was.

I’d imagined cuts all on his body.

Him swimming out to sea…

Confident.

Secure.

Cocky.

His blood mixing with the salt and the tide.

Short silence.

I’d think of a shark falling in love with him the way I did.

His body. His blood.

Short pause.

I’d listen to it devour him.

His screams being sucked up into the surf and air.

Sinking together. To the bottom.

Into the darkness.

Short pause.

Playwright Portrait, Martin Epstein, Excerpt from Vera Similitude

Martin Epstein,

Playwright and Master Teacher, 2006

VERA SIMILITUDE

SCENE: OUTSIDE A CLOSED SAN FRANCISCO MOVIE THEATRE SHOWING A HITCHCOCK RETROSPECTIVE. IT IS 2 AM. VERA, A HUNGARIAN GIRL-WOMAN IN A RAINCOAT DROPS TO HER KNEES AND KISSES THE PAVEMENT.

VERA:
(FACING THE HOUSE)
Cinema is the true religion of everyone I know. Regardless of how we were raised, or what we profess ourselves to be, the gods we love the most and would die for are all movie stars. If you think I'm joking, try to go three days without talking about movies. If anyone else brings the subject up, keep absolutely silent. If they persist, walk away. But prepare to be ostracized like a bad odor. I tried it once. Two days later, I was ready for the loony bin. (SHE KISSES PAVEMENT AGAIN, AS A FIGURE IN A BLACK SKY MASK ENTERS BEHIND HER) And this is why, my first day on American soil, I take this special moment to pay tribute to the star-spangled universe of celluloid bandits who stole my heart and kept it from despair through so many difficult years. Katherine Hepburn and company, god bless you. And thank you, America, for putting the idea in my head that the great adventure in this life is to find that special someone you can go to the movies with! Not just once, but over and over and over again, regardless of what's playing! (THE MASK ADVANCES) Yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. Mystery Man! (MASK STOPS) My shy, as yet invisible moving going pal--You jumbo jet sized egotist, who long long ago roared into my life and made yourself the absent center of all my sweetest dreams...(MASK ADVANCES) Shame on you! (MASK STOPS) Shame O shame for making we wait so long! (MASK ADVANCES) Shame for making me waste my time with incompetent boys from 17 different countries before I realized you just had to be an American guy! (MASK ADVANCES) Shame most of all for still keeping yourself hidden when I've practically thrown myself at your feet! (MASK ADVANCES) But be forewarned, Sir. When you finally choose to make yourself known, I'm going to punish you, and how! Even if you turn out to be as gorgeous as the Marlboro Man and twice as rich, you're going to pay for every second you kept me waiting. For every second you kept me waiting, I'm going to drag you deeper and deeper down, until you've gorged yourself on the pleasures of the damned! (THE MASK GRABS HER HAIR, PULLING HER HEAD BACK. IN HIS OTHER HAND, AN OPEN RAZOR) Stop!

Ruth Maleczech of Mabou Mines, circa 1982

Ruth Maleczech avec petit fils.

circa 1982

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Playwright Portrait, Lynn Nottage, Excerpt from Ruined

              The Playwright Lynn Nottage, 2010

©pswb2010

RUINED

SALIMA:

He called me a filthy dog, and said I tempted them. Why else would it happen? Five months in the bush, passed between the soldiers like a washrag. Used. I was made poison by their fingers, that is what he said. He had no choice but to turn away

Do you know what I was doing on that morning?

I was working in our garden picking the last of the sweet tomatoes. I put Beatrice down in the shade of a Frangipani tree, because my back was giving me some trouble. Forgiven? Where was Fortune? He was in town fetching a new iron pot.

"Go," I said "Go, today man or you won't have dinner tonight!" I had been after him for a new pot for a month. And finally on that day the damn man had to go and get it. A new pot. The sun was about to crest, but I had to put in another hour before it got too hot. It was such a clear and open sky. This splendid bird, a peacock had come into the garden to taunt me, and was showing off its feathers. I stooped down and called to the bird. "Wssht, Wssht." And I felt a shadow cut across my back, and when I stood four men were there over me, smiling, wicked schoolboy smiles. "Yes?" I said. And the tall soldier slammed the butt of his gun into my cheek. Just like that. It was so quick; I didn't even know I'd fallen to the ground. Where did they come from? How could I not have heard them?

One of the soldiers held me down with his foot. He was so heavy, thick like an ox and his boot was cracked and weathered like it had been left out in the rain for weeks. His boot was pressing my chest and the cracks in the leather had the look of drying sorghum. His foot was so heavy and it was all I could see, as the others..."took" me. My baby was crying. She was a good baby. Beatrice never cried, but she was crying, screaming. "Shhh" I said. "Shhh." And right then...

(A moment)

A soldier stomped on her head with his boot. And she was quiet.

(A moment. Salima releases-)

Where was everybody? WHERE WAS EVERYBODY?!

Playwright Portrait, John Patrick Shanley, Excerpt from Celllini

The Playwright John Patrick Shanley, 2008

Cellini
Adopted from the Autobiography of Beuvenuto Cellini
CELLINI: Now it pleased my glorious Lord and Immortal God that at last I had brought whole to completion. The Duke was stationed at a window low upon the first floor of the palace. Just above the entrance to the piazza. There, half hidden, he could hear everything that folk were saying of my statue. So on a certain Thursday morning, before the sun was fully in the heavens, and before such a multitude as I have never before or since seen, I exposed my Perseus to the public gaze. Florence! Florence! (The lights change. The company sees the Perseus. We do not. The, as first, have no reaction except to draw back ever so slightly, Then, one by one, led by Bandinello and Riccio, they begin to applaud. One breathes, “Bravo” another “Che Bella,”another “Magnifica” another “Grandiosa” another“Bellisima”Cellini faces the Pope and genuflects, He faces the Duke and bows, He throws Caterina a kiss. She returns it. Then he signals them tosilence and speaks to us). There are those who say I worked the metal too much. That my Perseus has failed the terrible test of greatness. Some flaw of proportion in the work. Perhaps. But I say to you, as I prepare to tell my life, no man can will himself to excellence. No fool or hero, of his own, can climb from the sky to Heaven itself. Such things are the province of Almighty God. But God looks down with favor on those who are merely animals, eating and drinking and fucking and dying. God looks down—and Time is nothing to Him, and our doubts are nothing to Him—He looks down with favor upon the fellow who tries his hand, who never gives up, though upon the wheel of the world turns against him and reveals to his mortal eye the insufficiency. The Creator of us all looks down upon our lives and hopes for us that we are not animals only. But that we behave in a way that does us merit on the level of divine. Whether that be in Kindness, or in Justice, or in Erudition, or in Workmanship, or in Love or Teaching or, in my pitiful case, Art. My Life has saved me, my Nature has uplifted me. I am ashamed of nothing, I have killed men and beaten women and ridiculed my enemies and I am ashamed of nothing. I will tell you. God will judge me. I have already judged myself. Write this, (the boy opens his book and poises his pen) I am happy that I was born. I have dwelt in the presence of greatness> Hold there a moment. (To the audience) Pray upon the telling of your tale, that you can say the same. Across 443 years, and all the way from Florence, buona sera. And Benvenuto.
COMPANY. (simultaneously) Benvenuto. (The lights fade. Darkness. Celebratory music. Curtain call)

Playwright Portrait, Bill Bowers, Excerpt from It Goes Without Saying

Bill Bowers Playwright and Mime, 2007

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IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING

Bill:

When people find out that I am a mime,

it usually begs the question, "Why?"

"What got you interested?"

"How could this have happened to you??!"

I’m a mime because I'm from Montana. Not that Montana is known as a hotbed of mime action; but still, it is BIG and QUIET. All that sky and all that land…it can render you …speechless. And that moon. There is nothing like a Montana Moon. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time looking up at that moon. I thought it was there just for me. That it followed me wherever I went. And I thought it actually changed shape from night to night:- from half to whole, crescent to quarter. I remember the night when I was about eight, I first saw the whole of the moon…when I saw the dark side too. I thought I was the only one who knew. It was our secret. Just between us.