The Best American Short Plays 2012-2013

The Best American Short Plays 2012–2013

Edited with an intoduction by William W. Demastes

Copyright © 2014 by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books (an imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation)

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage or retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publishers, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

Note: All plays contained in this volume are fully protected under copyright laws of the United States of America, the British Empire, including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the International Copyright Union and the Universal Copyright Convention. Permission to reproduce, wholly or in any part, by any method, must be obtained from the copyright owners or their agents.

Published in 2014 by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books

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Contents

Introduction: Hot Tempers and Cold Decrees

William W. Demastes

The True Death of Socrates

Frank Higgins

Existence

Murray Schisgal

The Origins of the Drink They Named After Me

Steve Feffer

Rise

Crystal Skillman

Spatial Disorientation

Lisa Soland

Between the Lines

Amber Leanne Marcoon

The Rainbow

James Armstrong

Subtraction

Kevin McFillen

Flare

Edith Freni

Blue, Blue Moon

John Patrick Bray

Kid Gloves

David Rusiecki

The Grim Raper

Daniel Guyton

Hurt

Saviana Stanescu

Cell

Cassandra Medley

Abandoned in Queens

Laura Maria Censabella

Free Will

Billy Aronson

Dark King Kills Unicorn

Reina Hardy

Deer Haunting: A Far Side Cartoon

Andréa J. Onstad

2nd Anniversary Near Taurus Major

Gene Kato

The New Models

Rory Leahy

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Hot Tempers and Cold Decrees

William W. Demastes

Humans love to think of themselves as rational beings well in control of their lives from sunup to sundown and dusk to dawn. We learn to follow rules of proper behavior and more than happily issue out advice to those who just can’t get a handle on their rash behavior. Restraint and order, after all, are the cornerstones of human society and civilization. The problem is that human nature bucks and bridles at every attempt to socialize and civilize, even when we and our best intentions do everything we can to keep a lid on it. Shakespeare perhaps best captured this sentiment when he had his youthful Portia observe, The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree. In those few words he has managed to capture precisely why it is so difficult to be human; if it were okay simply to let our hot tempers prevail, life would be so much easier.

Or so we think. Portia speaks these words in The Merchant of Venice with all the confident authority of youthful inexperience. It’s the kind of fantasizing that obsesses us all to one degree or another, that wish to chuck it all, take that job and shove it, live on love, and head out for the great unknown with little more than a toothbrush to encumber us. Wouldn’t life be grand if our impulsive inclinations could overthrow the compulsory duties that actually make living possible though not always enjoyable? Sad to say, blood’s hot temper may pave a seductive path for us all, but sooner or later we all come to realize that cold decrees are what prevent those hot tempers from spiraling us all out of orbit.

What we all eventually discover—even Portia discovers this—is that life involves a constant struggle between blood and brain, temper and decree. If either gets the upper hand for any extended period of time, the result is invariably catastrophic, what Robert Frost once described as an end by fire or ice and T. S. Eliot described as either bang or whimper. While the former (fire and bang) are far more dramatic, the latter (ice and whimper), sadly, are far more common.

But then there’s the life spent somewhere between the two extremes, that temperate zone of sustainability neither too consuming nor too stultifying. This is the place most of us are searching for. And what we learn on those occasions when we find it is that we can never really just settle down and enjoy it; rather, we find that keeping in that zone remains a lifelong challenge of slipping in and sliding out of that place of contentment, getting sometimes too hot-blooded, sometimes too cold-decreed.

What is exciting about theater and drama is that we can experience this struggle between hot tempers and cold decrees from the relative safety of a theater seat or living room lounge chair. While poets may like talking about this struggle, playwrights go the step beyond and bring the struggle to life for us to witness in all its ever-dynamic detail. It’s a struggle we can watch someone like Shakespeare’s Portia grow to understand because theater at its best brings a pulse to the many ways we test our boundaries. And it presents the results of this struggle in living color, fortifying us to face the unending challenges that confront us all on a daily basis. That’s what theater does. That’s what the plays in this volume do.

They capture the struggle between hot tempers and cold decrees, reminding us of the many resulting complexities we all experience in our lives, from the most trivial to the most consequential. The push-pull of this human struggle is captured with almost mythic intensity in Frank Higgins’s comic farce The True Death of Socrates, which puts an earthy spin on Socrates’s stoic embrace of otherworldly idealism. In Higgins’s version, flesh-and-blood Socrates balks at the stoically noble suicide that will make him immortal in the annals of Western philosophy, begging the question: How many among us are really willing to die for an idea? For this Socrates, at least, the warm-blooded needs of the individual outweigh the cold-blooded attraction of history.

Then there are those cases when the heat of life goes out long before existence comes to an end, demonstrating the sad—and sometimes even tragic—truth that cold decrees often do obstruct a leaping hot temper, if for no other reason than that habit and routine ultimately encrust our lives, and comfort and conformity effectively extinguish the heat of our once warm blood. To many, that has become the definition of modern life. Murray Schisgal’s Existence provides a comic snapshot of an arrogantly self-contented couple celebrating twenty-seven years of conformist life. Steve Feffer’s The Origins of a Drink They Named After Me distills the sentiment of regret and captures it in a high-ball glass. Feffer himself describes the play as an illustration of hot passions being fueled by cold drink. If bars are venues for confessions of regret, so are reunions at weddings, which Crystal Skillman captures so well in Rise. Lisa Soland’s Spatial Disorientation rather boldly dramatizes such reflections in a local airport just prior to John F. Kennedy Jr.’s last tragic plane flight, capturing an all-too-brief lifetime of action filled with moments of joyful exhilaration and others demanding extensive self-exploration and confessions of imperfection. Amber Marcoon’s Between the Lines dramatizes the anxieties that attend youthful relationships and that invisible hand that so often prevents us from following our youthful inclinations. The Rainbow by James Armstrong brings together two lost souls who eventually agree to try to dump their lonely pasts and jump-start their futures together. Kevin McFillen’s Subtraction unites an elderly man and young woman, engaging them in a game of memory and loss, demonstrating one way that regret is dealt with: by subtracting the pain from the narratives that are our lives. Recovering what has been subtracted may be painful, but it also helps heal. Generally speaking, that is a message embedded in most works in this volume.

Flare by Edith Freni offers a dialogue between two strangers, John Patrick Bray’s Blue, Blue Moon brings together brother and sister, and David Rusiecki’s Kid Gloves presents a termination interview between an employee and a personnel expert. In different ways, each presents episodes of loss and missed opportunities. Daniel Guyton’s The Grim Raper takes its own comic barroom scene, but chillingly reverses all audience allegiances by transforming an abstraction of Death into a commonplace but horrific vision of evil. What rhythms and patterns of life, one might ask, can possibly lead a person willfully to harm another, especially if one does harm without remorse? Hurt by Saviana Stanescu follows just such a downward spiral and ends with chilling results of the sort that is increasingly documented on television news.

Cell by Cassandra Medley and Abandoned in Queens by Laura Maria Censabella are family dramas in the classically American realist tradition. Cell nicely captures the joy of life that can at times overwhelm the fear of living, while Abandoned in Queens is a gritty dialogue in which a son faces an uphill battle as he struggles to avoid duplicating his father’s bloodless, empty life.

Free Will by Billy Aronson presents a Shakespearean menagerie and brings home the point that love is the greatest power on earth, tantalizing in its promise of bliss but a threat to life itself because of its frequently devastating aftermath. Aronson points out also that freedom can be a terrifying commodity, one which leads his newly liberated characters to learn to improvise or perish. Reina Hardy’s fanciful Dark King Kills Unicorn rings with the fearsome observation that love makes meat of us all. But in this, as in most of the plays of this volume, the question that hovers above everything is: Should we abandon our pursuits of love for more comfortable, less disturbing, existences? Is it even humanly possible to abandon thoughts of love? And if so, what would our lives be like?

Maybe it would be like what we see in Deer Haunting: A Far Side Cartoon by Andréa J. Onstad. She turns the tables on a group of lifelong recreational hunters in a comic turn that captures the dulling, deadening effects of a life of routine in the great American heartland.

Two futuristic plays conclude the volume, each playing with human nature’s many paradoxical urges. 2nd Anniversary Near Taurus Major by Gene Kato creates an extragalactic nightmare that even technological wonders like sensory duplicators can’t overcome. None of the flash and show of this play can outperform the simple power of the humans’ closing words: I love you. And in The New Models by Rory Leahy angels are tasked with creating sentient beings capable of maximally experiencing life. The male and female subjects do feel the momentary rush of freedom and companionship. With freedom and companionship, however, comes responsibility, and the age-old struggle between the two poles of hot blood and cold decree emerges yet again.

Portia learns—and so do we—that cold decrees work best when they manifest at least some recognition of the hot tempers they are presumably created to control. Feeling a sort of empathy for the failings that accrue through youthful passion, for example, has the potential to generate greater justice in the controls designed to minimize hot-temper’s damage. What theater—and these plays—offers us is the opportunity to consider the human condition and, with greater consideration, to try to embrace both fears and temptations—checks and urges—as necessary and even complementary components of a life worth living.

The True Death of Socrates

Frank Higgins

The True Death of Socrates by Frank Higgins. Copyright © 2014 by Frank Higgins. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.

CAUTION/ADVICE: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that performance of The True Death of Socrates is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional and amateur stage performing rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, information storage and retrieval systems, and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed upon the matter of readings, permission for which must be secured from the author’s agent in writing.

Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Penny Luedtke, The Luedtke Agency, 1674 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10024, 212-765-9564.

Frank Higgins

Frank Higgins is the author of Black Pearl Sings and The Sweet By ’n’ By, the latter produced with Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow. His other plays include Miracles, Gunplay, The Taste Test, WMKS: Where Music Kills Sorrow, and Carnality: 6 Double-Shots of Desire. His work has been seen across the country at the Williamstown Theater Festival, the Old Globe Theatre, Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., Northlight Theatre in Chicago, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theater, and other places. He has also written several plays for young audiences, including Anansi the Spider and the Middle Passage, The Country of the Blind, and Born Blue: The Diary of the Blue Cat. He teaches at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

• • • production history • • •

The True Death of Socrates appeared at the Living Room in Kansas City, Missouri, in December 2013 as part of Carnality: 6 Double-Shots of Desire. The cast:

SOCRATES Forrest Attaway

PLATO Coleman Crenshaw

DOOFUS Tosin Morohunfola

Directed by Frank Higgins

characters

SOCRATES

PLATO

DOOFUS a young student of PLATO

set

A simple jail cell in ancient Athens.

synopsis

PLATO arrives at a jail cell to record the last words of the great SOCRATES and to administer the hemlock. But when SOCRATES balks at being executed, PLATO must take drastic action in order to create good history. Will SOCRATES succeed in avoiding death?

[SOCRATES sits in his cell with his back to the audience. PLATO and his student DOOFUS enter at the side. PLATO carries a cup.]

PLATO Ah, here we are outside the prison cell of the great man. Blue sky, bright sun. And yet a dark day. The gods like to dick us around with dramatic irony.

DOOFUS Tell me, master, why is Socrates sentenced to death?

PLATO For the most serious crime of all: subverting the minds of young people.

DOOFUS How’d he do that?

PLATO He taught them to ask questions.

DOOFUS You can be executed for that?

PLATO Authority doesn’t like questions. We must distinguish between what is real, and what is comforting to believe is real.—Doofus, I’m a great philosopher; you might want to take notes when I speak.—When the thing you question is the state, you become a danger to the state. And Socrates has been sentenced to the harshest penalty of all.

DOOFUS Death?

PLATO No book contract. If people in the future are going to know about Socrates, it will depend on my report of his heroic life, and death. Sniff.

DOOFUS Wine flavored with parsley. Can I have a sip?

PLATO Stop. It’s hemlock. This will be the means of the great man’s death.

DOOFUS You’ll kill your former teacher yourself?!

PLATO By custom the guard gives the poison to a friend or family member. That person then gives the drink to the condemned.

DOOFUS And he drinks freely?

PLATO Yes, for not to do so is dishonorable. It is time. Socrates, it is I, Plato. On this your final day, what are your words of wisdom?

SOCRATES Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Get that away from me!!

PLATO Calm down, O great teacher.

SOCRATES Plato, I beg you, help me escape! Smuggle me out under your toga!

PLATO What?

SOCRATES You’re right; won’t work. I’ll leave in his clothing; we leave him here in my clothing. The guards won’t find out for hours. I’ll be on a boat before anyone knows.

PLATO This is no way to leave this world.

SOCRATES But it’s a way to leave this cell.

PLATO This lacks honor.

SOCRATES Honor? What is honor? I want to study honor for another ten years.

PLATO I will not be part of this.

SOCRATES You won’t help your old teacher escape?

PLATO Never.

SOCRATES But I taught you everything you know.

PLATO And what I know is the importance of honor. And of leaving a legacy that will inspire people for thousands of years.

SOCRATES [Blows a raspberry.] If you help me escape, I’ll give you all my money.

PLATO You have no money. You’re a teacher.

SOCRATES Please don’t kill me. I have a wife and daughter—kill them.

PLATO Get a hold of yourself. You’ve often spoken of the underworld, and what things might be like there. Now you’ll know.

SOCRATES But I don’t want to know yet. Please! Help your old friend and teacher get out of here.

PLATO I can not.

SOCRATES You’re right. I should not have expected you to help me.

DOOFUS Should I still be taking notes?

PLATO No. The world can’t know about this. Socrates, how can you behave in this ignoble way?

SOCRATES Because I want more life. Is that a crime? I have questions that I haven’t found the answers to yet. Why do we have earlobes? Why do men have nipples? What’s that all about? Do you know?

DOOFUS So we’ll know where to pierce our flesh and be hung from the ceiling during orgies?

SOCRATES No, in addition to that. And tell me this, Plato. What year is it?

PLATO Three ninety-nine, B.C.

SOCRATES Yes! And last year was four hundred B.C. Why are the numbers counting down? And counting down to what? And what is this B.C.? I want to know!

PLATO None of us will live that long to find out. What matters is a noble death. People need you to die in a way that is meaningful.

SOCRATES Why? Let’s question that assumption over wine.

PLATO No. I’ll prove that life has meaning in the book I write. The book about your heroic death. You’ll inspire people for all time.

SOCRATES Sounds good. Let’s drink a toast.

PLATO No. You must drink this wine. Drink and become a legend.

SOCRATES No thank you.

PLATO Doofus, help me convince Socrates to die a great death.

DOOFUS Uh, question first, master, since we’re supposed to ask questions?

PLATO Yes, yes, what is it?

DOOFUS It’s about, well, free will?

SOCRATES Brilliant boy!

PLATO The voluntary death of Socrates embodies free will.

DOOFUS But if it’s not true—

PLATO Then people won’t be inspired, will they? Human beings need heroes. Now do you help me or not?

SOCRATES Don’t do it. He’s being selfish. If he doesn’t have a hero and a heroic death, he won’t even be able to outsell a cookbook. Ask him! Question authority!

DOOFUS Master?

PLATO If I can’t sell books, I can’t give free scholarships to needy students, can I?

DOOFUS As you wish, master.

SOCRATES You traitor to the Truth.

PLATO Hold him down.

SOCRATES No, no! Get back! Let go of me! Let go!

[DOOFUS holds him down. PLATO tries to pour the hemlock into his mouth.]

PLATO Be noble! This is not painful. A tingling and then numbness.—Stop spitting.—Doofus, give me that parchment.—A sad thing, Socrates. The notes of your final moments must be used as a funnel.—Hold his mouth open!

SOCRATES Argh! Argh!

PLATO Be noble! Be noble!

SOCRATES Argh!

PLATO There. All done. You could have made things easier for us.

SOCRATES My legs! They’re numb!

PLATO Fear not. Do you have any final words?

SOCRATES I can’t feel my dick!

PLATO Won’t do. How’s this? How little does the common herd know of the nature of Truth.

SOCRATES My heart! There’s no feeling in my heart! Arrg, arrg!

[SOCRATES gives the death rattle and dies.]

PLATO Farewell, noble old friend.

[PLATO covers SOCRATES with a blanket.]

DOOFUS I’ve learned a lot today, master.

PLATO But we must never speak of it. Humanity would be damaged by too much truth. Reality—and history—will be what we tell them it is.

[PLATO drinks from the other goblet.]

DOOFUS Can I have some too master?

[PLATO hands the wine goblet to DOOFUS, who is about to drink when SOCRATES jumps up.]

SOCRATES Stop! You like questioning things? You might want to question the wine, Doofus.

PLATO Did I not give you enough poison?

SOCRATES This morning I told the guard to put parsley, not hemlock, in the wine that he’d give to you.

PLATO But the guard knew he had to give you hemlock.

SOCRATES He did. In the wine he gave to me.

PLATO But why?

SOCRATES Always have a Plan B. Let that be a lesson, Doofus.

DOOFUS Noted, master.

PLATO But that means you’ve poisoned me: Plato, your greatest student!

SOCRATES Life’s a bitch.

PLATO My legs!

SOCRATES And then ya die.

[PLATO collapses.]

PLATO My groin! My groin!

SOCRATES See, I wasn’t willing to give up my groin just yet. There’s too many good-looking girls. And guys. And goats.

PLATO You mean orgasms are more important to you than honor?

SOCRATES Why should you be noble, when you can be orgasmic?

PLATO Knowing this about you, it’s better that I be dead.

SOCRATES Plato, you’ve been dead for a long time. If your dick is dead, you’re dead and don’t know it.

PLATO Argh! Argh!

SOCRATES Hey, if there’s orgasms in the afterlife, come back and let me knooooow.

PLATO Argh!

[PLATO dies.]

DOOFUS Are you going to kill me now?

SOCRATES You’re not really very bright, are you?

DOOFUS I’m a witness to murder. You can’t let me live.

SOCRATES Think. The guards saw two men come in. They could see two men go out, carrying a body.

[SOCRATES advances toward him with the goblet.]

I’m offering you life. That’s more than Plato gave you.

DOOFUS How can I live knowing the great Plato was willing to lie? And the great Socrates was willing to kill?

SOCRATES You’ll get over it. Life?

[He grabs his crotch.]

Or death? Choose.

PLATO Don’t do it!

SOCRATES Plato, you are a pain the ass.

PLATO You’ll never get away with it. They’ll come after you both.

SOCRATES Actually, no. Necessity is the mother of invention. I will take on the identity of Plato. Human beings need a hero? I’ll give ’em one. And I say, Socrates died a noble death.

PLATO No!

DOOFUS If I go along with this, then I want something more than just life. I want a better name.

SOCRATES Yeah, you can’t attract the really quality lovers with a name like Doofus.

PLATO This is wrong.

SOCRATES I’ll need you to be loyal. To remind you of that, I’ll give you the same name as my loyal dog: Aristotle.

DOOFUS Agreed.

PLATO This is wrong!

SOCRATES We need to shut him up. And Socrates needs some famous last words. What Plato said I said? That’s good; write that down.

PLATO Wrong!

SOCRATES And hold him down.

[SOCRATES pours more wine down PLATO’s throat.]

PLATO No! No! Argh.

SOCRATES Y’know, Aristotle, you’re . . . kind of a good-lookin’ guy.

PLATO Flirting? Here? Now?

[While they are over PLATO, SOCRATES touches ARISTOTLE’s face.]

SOCRATES How little does the common herd know of Truth.

[PLATO sees this and dies for good.]

PLATO Argh!

• • •

Existence

Murray Schisgal

Existence by Murray Schisgal. Copyright © 2014 by Murray Schisgal. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.

CAUTION/ADVICE: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that performance of Existence is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional and amateur stage performing rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, information storage and retrieval systems, and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed upon the matter of readings, permission for which must be secured from the author’s agent in writing.

Inquiries