LOCAL STORY on Indie Theater Now

Indie Theater Now has been creating an on-line collection of plays, and today LOCAL STORY is live on the site.

You can read it for a pittance. Then you can dream of tiny Betsy and learn the sort of local history that they don't teach in school.

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the four of us - Itamar Moses

I've been away from this. I've been reading, but mostly unpublished scripts. And I've been writing. And the teaching. That's also been happening. But, happily, I started reading plays just to read and the first one I picked up off the piles around the house was this. And dear oh dear am I glad I did. For the play - but also the afterward, which is right up there with the forwards that are included in many of Tennessee Williams collected plays.

The Four of Us is a two character play, David and Benjamin. It follows their friendship from their time at music camp as teens on through their twenties when they are both writers - a novelist and a playwright. It unfolds in nine scenes which move back and forth in time - in one scene different times for each character. Simply, the story is one character sells his first book and starts his professional life with acclaim and cash as the other works, finding some success later with a play written about his friend and their relationship.

I do try in these posts to give a nuts and bolts response. To withhold criticism and praise. There's plenty of that in the world and I'm interested in looking at how the play works, how it's laid out and how the story is told. To be primarily objective.

Being objective with this script is less about description and more about acknowledging the clean economy and simplicity at play in each scene which culminates in a perfect theatrical moment.

(and perhaps the subject matter and the perspective on writing and successes and friends and the frustrations of writing plays is all just hitting its target audience right here at this spot in my heart, but I'm guessing most readers of this blog may share a similar spot.)

Love Song - by John Kolvenbach

Premiered in 2006 at Steppenwolf, Love Song is a comedy in ten scenes. It moves between Beane, a recluse, seemingly depressive and his sister and her husband, Joan and Harry, who try to help him amidst their busy lives. Beane comes home in the third scene to a woman in his apartment, wearing his clothes, she came to steal but there's nothing to steal and Beane is transformed by his contact with her. In their second scene together she tells him:

MOLLY
Do you understand who I am? The last one? The architect? I took his stereo, I Ripped it out of his bookcse, It has no buttons and it's also a satellite and a particle accelerator and no decent person could possibly afford this Object and I am Ripping it out of his bookcase, I've got my boot on a shelf for leverage. But then I notice something: Hold on a minute. None of the books have been read. No cracked bindings, Beane. Not a wrinkle. I burned his house down. I got some gasoline and a blowtorch and my vengeance and I burned it to the ground. I waited for him to come home and I watched the architect cry and I felt happy for the only time this year. Is who I am.

BEANE
I think that's reasonable.

He falls in love with her. He tastes things, he develops a passion for the world. His sister and husband worry but then are inspired to play hookey from work and fuck all day. But then it becomes clear she is imaginary and Joan encourages him to hold on to her anyway. Molly comes back to Beane, but Beane chooses to try the world, knowing that Molly will be waiting for him should it not work out.

It's simple. It's fast. It starts immediately with a wordless scene of Beane in his apartment with the walls closing in. The dialogue is swift, smart, current. Funny and sad and lots of love, lots of different loves loaded into a small set of givens. And totally theatrical. Only theatrical. No bones about it - and even if you could give it Jungian interpretation of meeting and integrating the shadow self, the anima to your animus or whatever - it doesn't fall into pretention. It sticks to comedy - quick characters drawn swiftly with few details and dealing with this - an awkward brother, a caring sister and how they will live in the world.

There's no rhyme or reason to the choosing of plays for this experiment. I'm reading one everyday. I'm apart from my book collection so I'm relying on what happens to have been ordered recently and what happens to be in the used bookstores of Atlanta, GA. I like this randomness. It is kindof the point, to read widely and try to write a response to them. I haven't decided if unplublished plays will be included. I read those too, but I'm leaving them out for the time being. In fact - even a new play like today's & Ruined I'm finding harder to talk back to. And I'm not sure why that is...so I'm thinking about that.