Shorter, Faster, Funnier

by Eric Lane

  RANDALL: (To audience.) Yeah. And that.

  BOB: (To audience.) Plus

  JOE: (To audience.) You have to drive on really long trips, to the beach, to visit your family, and then back from the beach. And if a tire blows you have to take it off, you have to put the spare on. Plus you have to pay.

  RANDALL: (To audience.) For everything.

  BOB: (To audience.) Plus

  JOE: (To audience.) Plus sometimes you don’t understand something and that can make you feel stupid and so you have to pretend you understand it. That can be hard. (Pause.)

  BOB: Yeah.

  RANDALL: Yeah. (Pause.)

  JOE: (To audience.) That can be hard. (Pause.)

  RANDALL: (To audience.) Mostly it’s hard though saying “I think you’re great” and “Would you maybe like to go out” and then you have to wait and find out what the answer is. That’s hard.

  (BRENDA enters.)

  Um. Brenda?

  BRENDA: Give me a second.

  (BRENDA exits.)

  RANDALL: Guys. Don’t bust my chops.

  JOE: I didn’t say anything.

  RANDALL: Don’t bust my chops.

  (BRENDA enters.)

  Hey Brenda?

  BRENDA: I said just give me a.

  (She exits. JOE, BOB, and RANDALL stand.

  RANDALL looks at JOE and BOB.

  BRENDA enters.)

  Yeah ok?

  RANDALL: Oh yeah so. Um.

  BRENDA: Yeah?

  RANDALL: Guys?

  JOE: Oh yeah.

  BOB: What?

  JOE: Ok. Come on.

  BOB: What?

  JOE: Bob come on.

  BOB: Oh yeah yeah ok!

  JOE: Ok!

  BOB: Ok.

  (They exit.)

  RANDALL: Yeah so Brenda?

  BRENDA: Yeah ok?

  RANDALL: So.

  BRENDA: I have work Randall.

  RANDALL: Um.

  BRENDA: Yeah ok so, what?

  RANDALL: Um.

  BRENDA: I have work.

  (Turns to exit.)

  RANDALL: I think you’re beautiful.

  BRENDA: What?

  RANDALL: Um.

  BRENDA: That’s not funny.

  RANDALL: What?

  BRENDA: That’s not funny.

  RANDALL: I’m not being funny.

  BRENDA: That’s mean. That pisses me off. That really truly pisses me off.

  RANDALL: No I do.

  BRENDA: I have a lot of work. And you’re pissing me off.

  RANDALL: No I do. I think you’re beautiful. I think you’re beautiful like a. Like something beautiful. Like the sun in the sky. Like a lake. Like the sunshine on a lake in the early evening right before the sun goes down and everything is calm. And the water’s calm. That’s what I think.

  BRENDA: Shut up.

  RANDALL: No I do.

  BRENDA: Like a lake?

  RANDALL: Like the sunshine. On the lake.

  BRENDA: Really?

  RANDALL: Yeah really.

  BRENDA: Really?

  RANDALL: And I think If only I could kiss her I’d be happy.

  BRENDA: Really?

  RANDALL: Yeah.

  BRENDA: You think if you kissed me, you’d be happy?

  RANDALL: Yeah.

  BRENDA: You want to kiss me?

  RANDALL: Yeah.

  BRENDA: And that would make you happy?

  RANDALL: Yeah.

  BRENDA: Just a kiss?

  RANDALL: Yeah.

  BRENDA: Ok so.

  RANDALL: Really?

  BRENDA: So?

  (They kiss. Should be a good smooch.)

  RANDALL: (Softly.) Yeah. That made me happy.

  BRENDA: I have work.

  RANDALL: Ok.

  BRENDA: I have work.

  RANDALL: Ok. Ok.

  (She exits.)

  JOE: (To audience.) I told my wife I loved the sound of her voice on the phone. And I do. I still do.

  BOB: (To audience.) I gave my girlfriend a smooth stone I found on the side of the road.

  JOE: Right?

  BOB: Yeah.

  (RANDALL smiles.)

  (The three men sit.)

  END OF PLAY

  TIRADE

  Mary Louise Wilson

  Tirade was first performed by Denny Dillon at the Odd Fellows Theatre in Olivebridge, New York, on May 30, 2009, with the author directing. Earlier versions entitled Actress and Rave were performed by Nicole Quinn and Mary Louise Wilson in Actors & Writers’ 2002 and 2004 Shorts Festivals.

  An actress of indeterminate years stands before us. She has a somewhat grandiose manner and a slight note of injury in her voice.

  I don’t like to blow my own horn, but I have some standing in the theater community. I am not exactly chopped liver in this town. People know my work, I know people, people know me. In fact, I was at a peak, an all-time high in my career.

  I had just opened in my one-woman show Tra-La!, an evening of song and anecdote based on my life in the theater You probably saw the reviews? “A benchmark performance,” “A comedic watershed,” “Pitch-perfect,” blah blah blah.

  And then this other show opened off-Broadway; Sick! A cancer play. And apparently, the lead, Dorothy Dibble, was nude during the entire evening. Well, in the first act she wore a hospital gown with the back open, but in the second act she was nude. And bald.

  Nevertheless, Sick! was a big hit. You can’t beat a cancer play. Audiences love it, they love watching somebody spit into a basin and die for two acts.

  Nude and bald. That’s acting. Fine! I don’t begrudge that. To Each His Own, I say, and Hooray for everybody. I was too busy performing in my own hit to pay too much attention anyway.

  It was just that I didn’t necessarily want to hear about her show all the time. Every other minute someone was asking me, “Have you seen Sick! yet?” I was still recovering from my opening night when my sister called from Alabama: “I just heard about this wonderful play Sick! Have you seen it?” Well of course I hadn’t seen it! I was performing Tra-La! eight times a week and in between I had to have complete bed rest! I called my oldest friend in Boston about coming into town to see my show and she said, “Okay, but can you get me tickets to Sick!?”

  And then this other thing started happening: this old theater queen who lives in my building attacked me in the lobby. “Guess who just moved in down the street?” I started to say I heard Meryl Streep had bought a house nearby when he screamed at me, “Not HER, Dorothy Dibble!” I arrived at my neighborhood hair salon and Jeffry the stylist hooted, “You just missed Dorothy Dibble!”

  Even the doorman. One night as I was leaving the building I distinctly heard Jahmeal the doorman say, “Dorothy Dibble.” I grabbed his lapels. “What did you just say?” The poor man has a very thick accent. I let go when I realized he was saying “Door thing. Jiggle.”

  But, I mean, why do people think one actress is just dying to hear about another actress, anyway? Is one pipe fitter thrilled to know about another pipe fitter’s work?

  But it wasn’t just the people in my neighborhood. Of course you’ve heard of Nicky LaPlant, the stage director? Nicky is one of the savviest, most wickedly funny people on the planet. Well one night we were having one of our little dinners together and he was babbling away about all the things he was doing, dropping names left and right and suddenly I hear him say “lunch with Dorothy Dibble.” I was shocked. “I didn’t know you knew her,” I said. “Oh yes, darling,” he purred, “Dorothy and I are quite, quite close.” Now I have known Nicky since we were both lobsters in a summer stock production of Alice in Wonderland and I never heard him mention the woman’s name before.

  And then another dear friend, the set designer George St. George, who absolutely adores me, always telling me how fantastic I am to the point of embarrassment, he called to invite me to his annual Christmas party. It’s always a lovely, elegant affair, never more than twelve of us; he said “Nathan’s coming, and
Marion and Merle, Philip Seymour and Dorothy—” “Dorothy?” I gasped. “Tell me it’s not Dorothy Dibble!” And he gushed, “Oh but it is! The Dorothy Dibble! Isn’t she marrrvelous?” This woman had become intimate with all my intimates.

  Even my classical theater buddy, Alma Osgood, the famous British snob and vocal coach who is forever going on about Shakespeare and classical training and steak-and-kidney pie. Suddenly Alma starts mentioning “Dottie” in every other breath: the Royal Academy and Dottie, Sir Ian and Dottie, Dottie and spotted dick. I was being Dottied to death. Suddenly “Dotties” are dotting everybody’s conversation.

  One day when Alma put Dottie in the same sentence with Dame Judy, I exploded. “What is the big deal with this woman, anyway? Has anybody ever seen her act?” And Alma rose to her full four feet and shouted, “Dorothy Dibble is a wonderful woman!”

  What exactly was the implication here? That I was not a wonderful woman?

  Dottie was apparently overflowing with the milk of human kindness. A veritable cow.

  The thing that galled me was, I had seen her act years ago. It wasn’t as if she just popped out of somebody’s ear, you know. She had been around for years. Way, way off-Broadway. Performing in broom closets and deserted grocery stores in her one-person show about Mamie Eisenhower. One day when I happened to be on the Lower East Side I went into this grocery to buy an orange and I actually saw her Mamie. All I can tell you is, I was gob-smacked with tedium. There was something going on up there, but I’m damned if I can say what it was. All the nuance and depth of an ironing board. With the voice of Bela Lugosi.

  When Sick! finally closed I assumed the furor over this woman would wane. But it was like gnats. An infestation. Dorothy Dibble was metastasizing.

  She started showing up on letterheads for theater benefits, on fund-raising committees. She was sitting on advisory boards. She was in my mail, inviting me to five-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinners.

  There was no escape. She was everywhere, like some ghastly perfume. No matter where I looked she was sounding off about climate change, or saving trees, or starring in two plays at the same time. She was on the front page of the New York Post. The pictures showed her frantically hailing a cab to get from one theater to the other, or in her dressing room frantically climbing out of one costume and into another. The AP picked the article up and it ran all over the country. My sister in Alabama cut it out and sent it to me.

  I had to get away; get out of the city. Get as far away as possible from the overinflated world of show business where everything is either brilliant or a bomb, a touchstone or a laugh-fest or a love song. When my show closed, I went to Tuscany. I made friends with a lovely Italian couple and one night they invited me to dinner. We were sitting out on the hill overlooking Firenze, lazily chatting, sipping our Bellinis, and suddenly in the cross talk I thought I heard something. That name. Dottie. No. It couldn’t be. “Dottie?” I sort of croaked. “Ah, si, si! La bella donna Dibble!” My hosts knew her. They all knew her.

  The next morning I left for Egypt. I had a sudden desire to see the pyramids.

  By the time I got back home Dorothy Dibble was appearing on two television series at the same time. She was running for president of the Screen Actors Guild. Her platform was clean air.

  I opened the Times to a full-page ad for world peace and there she was between Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu. Dorothy came out against clitoral mutilation on The Charlie Rose Show.

  And all this time I never ran into her. Not once. Not that I wanted to, I really, really did not want to come face-to-face with this person. And I had the oddest feeling she knew this. We were always just missing each other—she would have just left the same party or restaurant where I was. And then, one day, it happened. I was sitting in the reception room of a casting office waiting to audition. The door opened and I heard the casting woman say, “Bless you for coming in, Dorothy,” and then I heard a low, lugubrious voice say, “Tell your cute hubby hello for me,” and then she turned, and there she was, standing right in front of me.

  For a second our eyes locked, then she looked away. She didn’t know who I was! Or did she? There was something, I swear there was a glint in her eye. She did know! I had to do something. I could not have this woman not acknowledge me!

  She was moving toward the elevator. I heard myself yelling, “Dorothy Dibble! Hi! It’s Tootie Perkins! Tra-la?”

  She looked stony-faced for a second and then she broke out into this blinding smile. “Of course I know who you are!” she intoned. “I didn’t think you recognized me!”

  “How could I not know who you are?” I heard myself gushing, “and your fabulous show Sick!? I was dying to see it! I mean, I was sick that I—I mean, I was beside myself that I missed it because of my show!”

  “Well I saw your show,” she said—she must have come to a Wednesday matinee—“and it was one of the most brilliant afternoons I have ever spent in the theater.”

  Then she bowed. Like this. (Deep bow to the floor.) She said, “Your performance was thrilling. Exquisite. Beyond perfection.” The elevator came. I got in with her.

  She continued telling me how wonderful I was all the way down to the lobby and out onto Sixth Avenue. I couldn’t seem to manage to get a word in edgewise. And I have to confess, I was so—pumped up. I felt like I was on helium. I don’t remember what happened next. We just sort of floated to Spitto’s; you know, where the theatrical in-crowd hangs out. I don’t remember what I ate or drank, I was woozy with praise. According to Dottie, I was spellbinding, heartbreaking. Even my hands could act. My feet could bring tears to the eyes.

  These words were tumbling over me and my head was hanging humbly lower and lower over my french fries when I happened to glance up and just for a minute there I thought I saw something. I thought I caught a glint in her eye. Something steely. I wasn’t sure.

  Just then she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room and the minute she was gone I felt my head clear a little. And that’s when it hit me; she was trying to kill me with compliments!

  I felt my gorge rising. I had to fight this. I couldn’t go under again, I had to stop her. Then I saw her making her way back across the room, waving to tables, stopping occasionally to kiss Sarah Jessica here and Liev there, and then she was looking down at me with that blinding smile, intoning in that sepulchral voice of hers, “Oh, Act-tress …” and I felt myself turning to jelly again. I had to fight back! I grabbed her jowls. “Your face is a benchmark of emotion!” I yelled. “Not since Brando has an acting style so completely altered a generation!” I didn’t know what I was saying. I just lifted things from old Ben Brantley reviews—not necessarily her reviews—and spewed them at her. “Your scenes are a series of watersheds! You render an explosive effect! Your searing gestures galvanize the scenery!”

  She began to wobble. She was faint. “I need air,” she gasped. I let go of her cheeks. We left the restaurant and fell into a cab.

  All the way downtown we pummeled each other with praise. She called me a legend in my own time, I called her the Duse of our day. I had no idea there were so many good things to say about anybody.

  The cab pulled up to her building. We wrestled over who would go through her door first; she finally shoved me through, yelling, “Pearls before swine!” As I went past her I shot back, “Age before beauty!” And then right there in the foyer we grappled. I grabbed her ankle and roared, “Great bones!” She grabbed my hair and growled, “I’d give my right tit for hair like this!” I twisted around and got her by the neck. We fell to the floor. I got my leg over her, pinned her arms down and hissed, “You were incredible in that scene with the doctor!” She groaned, “I will never forget the way you moved your hand when you were telling the story about your nephew!” and butted her head into mine—hard.

  I passed out for maybe two seconds and when I came to she was up and getting something; a gun, maybe. Or a poster for me to sign. I reached out and blindly felt around for something, a heavy object. I managed to
get up and just as she turned around I screamed, “That thing you did with your IV drip was hallucinating!” and clobbered her with her Tony Award. She dropped like a felled tree. I went closer. She didn’t seem to be breathing. I said, “Dorothy? Your timing is inimitable.” She didn’t move. I said, “Dorothy, can you hear me? You are luminous.” She didn’t stir. I moved quickly, wiped my fingerprints off her leg, her Tony, and opened the door. Then, just as I was leaving, I turned back and said one last thing. “Dorothy? You know when you were fiddling with your catheter and wailing at the top of your lungs? You really stank it up!” And then I let myself out.

  END OF PLAY

  UNCOVERED

  Caleen Sinnette Jennings

  Uncovered was first presented as a staged reading at the Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival, September 7, 2009. Producing Company: African Continuum Theatre Company, Washington, D.C.