Kirk Wood Bromley's Want's Unwisht Work, the earliest chronologically of the plays in this volume, comes from the early heyday of this contemporary downtown theatre bard, when his eclectic subjects and pyrotechnic poetics electrified a lot of people in the then-nascent indie theatre movement — a sort of cyberpunk response to Love's Labour's Lost.
Kirk Wood Bromley was born in 1966 in Corvallis, OR, but raised primarily in both Madison, WI and Phoenix, AZ. He is a NYC-based playwright, actor, theater writer, musician, and Artistic Director of Inverse Theater Company. He is the recipient of the 2001 Berrilla Kerr Foundation Playwrights Award, and his plays have won two FringeNYC Awards — Excellence in Playwriting (2002) and Excellence in Music and Lyrics (2003). Inverse Theater won the first ever Caffe Cino Award for Excellence in Off-Off-Broadway by the New York Innovative Theater Awards.
EXCERPT
Action: Rich and Elisa's house in Athens, Georgia, now.
enter Richard.
RICH- O, welcome, all! And thanks for your attendance
To celebrate with me my other's birth.
But while she's out, I'll intimate this chance
To tell my play's untold motive and worth:
Soon, here, my wife, art's most appreciant,
Will from bit work return, wholly unversed
That I this birthday show extravagant
Have for her eager, open mind rehearsed.
From fiction's menu, truth persuaded me
To click the icon of her sex. I scanned
Her muting drudge for psychic spontany,
And thus, from her own past, this present planned.
Now, though my bent is straight with subtle phrase,
Low gest, loose term, wild image and character,
Be sure, my wife's aware in fable's maze
What lives on stage, dies there healthier.
Yet, we must rush she's home, each day, same time.
That none's offended, I'll the politic
And moral of this rowdy, startling rhyme
Relate. Let's see, it starts, I think, with Dick.
Enter Elisa, at the door of her house.
ELISA- Rich! The door is jammed! Come lemme in!
RICH- Too late! That last you'll have to get yourselves.
Coming, Elisa, my love! Look how I sweat!
enter Rich, from inside the house.
RICH- O, sweet Elisa, happy birthday!
ELISA- Richard, when ya gonna fix this knob?
RICH- Tomorrow, dear! Today, I fix your spirit!
ELISA- You ever heard my daddy sayin no man's his own neighbor?
RICH- Yes.
ELISA- Can my daddy be heard and not heeded?
RICH- No.
ELISA- This house is fallin to pieces, Rich!
RICH- And you will fall to pieces when you see my piece, Elisa!
ELISA- Richard, it ain't fair. You make plays, I make payroll. You funambules all day, while I punch keys for crooks at Pilfer Pharmaceutic. Be a man, Richard. Quit dreamin diddlysquawk up in that attic, and contribute to our tangibles.
RICH- My plays, Elisa, are not diddlysquawk.
ELISA- Well, I don't get em, so they're diddlysquawk. I'm goin to bed.
RICH- But I made this work for you.
ELISA- And Richard, I am tired of workin for you. My mind is on screensaver, my fingers have devolved into staple removers, and I got a burnin case of secretary spread. You wanna give me a gift? Put down the unprofiting pen, haul your hausfrau up them stairs, and then, for her birthday, you can pour her a Concha y Toro.
Rich- O, please, sit in the comfy chair and let the show revive you.
ELISA- It's just a bunch a high-falutin fancy schmansy, Rich!
RICH- But words are birth, Elisa, and new ones nurture us.
ELISA- Ya, well, sleep's a word, so don't mind me if I nurture a doze.
RICH- Of course, my love.
ELISA- Ah, Rich, you're nothin nuts, but still my honey man.
RICH- O, happy birthday, love! My gift? A play!
But what? Eyes open, open! Feel the cheer
That pounced with you into our world this day,
For soon, your lust enacted visits here.
So, may my urgency have your patience,
My whim your work, my stress your distress ease,
Engendering a core of recompense,
That we, in sharing pleasures, pains appease.
For as they say, the tale must fall out
As naturally as it was first attached.
Just so, in asking you to join this bout,
I hope, once all's diverged, our wants be matched.
If darkly seated, you should snuggle sleep,
Then we our clash into your dreams will seep,
And recreating you in this show's run,
Be self reborn, if not more free for fun.
Elisa falls asleep, and Rich exits with her.
»
Larry Loebell's La Tempestad takes characters and situations from The Tempest and transplants them to Puerto Rico in the early 21st century to tell an entirely new and timely story with elegance and intelligence.
LARRY LOEBELL was born in 1951 in Philadelphia, PA, and has lived there most of his life. He is a playwright and a dramaturg and holds both a B.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Film & Television from Temple University. He also holds an M.A. in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing, from Colorado State University. He began his career in 1987 dramaturging a new musical for the American Music Theater Festival, and wrote his first play in 1992. He won the Pennsylvania Playwriting Prize in 1999, is a four-time recipient of the Playwriting Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (1996, 1998, 2004, 2006), and was awarded a New Play Commission from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture (2006).
EXCERPT
PROSPERO- Today the sky is cloudless and calm, Ariel. Blue as a baby's blanket, serene as a song. No jets are scrambling today.
ARIEL- They flew yesterday, and for twenty thousand days before that. They will fly today. Why should this stop them?
PROSPERO- Perhaps this is their brief penitence, a moment of silence before they come with their checkbooks to see if there is anything we need to help us forget the sight of that beautiful girl eviscerated before her lover's eyes. I have to go and meet the parents.
ARIEL- The boy does not want to go with you. He is afraid her parents will blame him.
PROSPERO- Do you know what face her parents will see in their grief? The radiant one of her looking up from her first steps, First Communion, first day in school. The face of innocence. But unless they see his grief as well they will never be able to look past their anger. Thrown clear as if by magic, this one and not the other. What can possibly explain this? They must see his grief to understand.
ARIEL- Is there anything else you need from me?
PROSPERO- Can you turn back time, Ariel? Two days, that's all I ask. Can we work that magic together, you and I? Perhaps together we might accomplish it.
ARIEL- Not even God can exercise that power.
PROSPOERO- Why should He be so inflexible? Just a few moments out of all the millennia. To set a thing right? Give those children a chance? (A beat) Do you remember before they came?
ARIEL- It is only two days. Though it seems a lifetime.
PROSPERO- I mean before the military. Was there a moment from your childhood…
ARIEL- No. They were always here, or so it seems to me. In the sky or up on the eastern tip. We did not go there.
PROSPERO- Off limits to us, yes. Parents kept their children away to keep them safe. (A beat) I did.
ARIEL- Yes.
PROSPERO- That is what her parents will feel. That they have failed to protect their child. To keep her from the precipice. From the place where danger waits. They will feel we have failed as well, we who were here, her implied guardians.
ARIEL- Do you know that I was proud of them?
PROSPERO- Who?
ARIEL- The Marines. The Navy. As a child. I felt pride. I did not understand the difference between us. I ran on the beach with my toy bomber, swooping my sand castle Vieques, protecting it from invaders, a hero to my people.
PROSPERO- Child's play.
ARIEL- Is there anything else I can do?
PROSPERO- Bring that bastard Alonso to me. This afternoon. That weasel who blithely sits in my café, who corrupts my employees to spy on me. Bring him here so I can spit curses at him face to face. That's his job, to stand at attention and take it like a good soldier. Let us make him do it.
ARIEL- He will spit back.
PROSPERO- Let him dare.
»
Titus X is Shawn Northrip's deliciously audacious punk rock Titus Andronicus. What I love about this piece, which was part of the very first New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2004, is how right the fit is: if any classic play demands to be the text of a punk rock opera, it's Titus.
SHAWN NORTHRIP is a playwright, composer-lyricist, and a teacher. He was born in suburban Washington, D.C. on February 23, 1977, and grew up in Arlington, VA. He received a Bachelor's degree in Theatre Education from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and an M.F.A in Musical Theatre Writing from New York University. He teaches Film Studies at George Mason High School in Falls Church, VA.
EXCERPT
SONG 6. THE CORONATION: TRIBUNE, TITUS, SATURNINUS
TRIBUNE
TITUS ANDRONICUS, ROME'S CITIZENS
WHOSE FRIEND IN JUSTICE THOU HAST BEEN
SEND THEIR TRUST FROM ME, THE TRIBUNE, TO YOU
WITH THIS ROYAL ROBE OF SPOTLESS HUE
AND NAME YOU IN ELECTION FOR THE EMPIRE
IT'S YOU THEY DESIRE
TITUS
AND I THANK YOU FOR THIS HONOR
BUT LET THE SON OF CAESAR CONTINUE THE LINE
HE WAS RAISED TO LOVE THIS EMPIRE
I JUST WANT TO RETIRE
LONG LIVE EMPEROR SATURNINE
TRIBUNE- Come again?
TITUS- Now, trust me on this one, everything is gonna be okay.
(Thumbs up)
TITUS- Long live our Emperor!
SATURNINUS- TITUS ANDRONICUS
FOR THIS FAVOR DONE TO US
ON ELECTION DAY I GIVE YOU THANKS.
AND TO THE ADVANCE
OF YOUR NAME AND YOUR FAMILY
YOUR DAUGHTER, LAVINIA, I'LL MAKE QUEEN OF ME
(Bassanius tries to interject)
BASSANIUS- Buh...
SATURNINUS- What do you think? Dad?
TITUS- Welcome to the family.
BASSANIUS- But...
TITUS- (to the Tribune) Could you go find my daughter? I'm sure she's around... somewhere.
(The Tribune goes out and returns as Lavinia.)
SATURNINUS- Is there something you'd like to say to my father-in-law, baby brother?
BASSANIUS- No. Nothing, bro.
TITUS- As a dowry, my noble lord, I present to you, my prisoner: Tamora, Queen of the Goths.
(Titus gives Tamora to Saturninus)
SATURNINUS- (to Tamora) Girl, I think you might be even hotter than I am. (to Titus) Cool. Very cool. (to the "Romans") I set my prisoner free.
TAMORA- Brave emperor: my sons Chiron and Demetrius, and my servant, the Moor, are still in Titus's custody.
SATURNINUS- Freedom for all!
TITUS- They're prisoners of war!
SATURNINUS- No one is free when others are oppressed.