Shorter, Faster, Funnier

by Eric Lane

  KRISTIN: She sounds like a woman.

  CYNDI: “Right turn in point two miles.”

  KRISTIN: Take Kent Street.

  DAN: (Raises a hand.) Wait for Cyndi.

  CYNDI: “Make a right.”

  (CYNDI rings her chimes and DAN turns.)

  KRISTIN: You trust a machine over me—what’s your problem?

  DAN: You know, it’s hard being a guy sometimes. First girls get taller and get boobs and all we get is zits, then they turn out to be smarter and more mature and they’re too cool to call us back or call each other bitches.

  KRISTIN: We call each other bitches, we just don’t like it when cute guys call us bitches.

  DAN: Am I a cute guy?

  KRISTIN: Lemme get back to you on that.

  CYNDI: “Right turn in point three miles.”

  DAN: Thank you, Cyndi.

  KRISTIN: Good. That’s better.

  (A quiet moment, and then …)

  DAN: I’m sorry about your cat. Tim told me. Mushroom.

  KRISTIN: He was great. He was twelve. I had him since sixth grade.

  DAN: I’m really sorry.

  KRISTIN: Thanks.

  (They both breathe.)

  DAN: There’s one thing Cyndi says.

  CYNDI: “Make a right turn.”

  DAN: One thing I really like.

  KRISTIN: What?

  DAN: You’ll see. She’ll say it when we get there. (Beat.) It’s one of those phrases that means more than it means.

  KRISTIN: Irony?

  DAN: Yeah. It’s positively fraught with irony. The good kind.

  KRISTIN: She better not call anybody a bitch.

  CYNDI: “Approaching destination on the right.”

  KRISTIN: You know what you’ve got, Dan? You’ve got this weird resentment. You rush to judgment on the basis of stuff that’s not there, like, I don’t know, like ghosts of girlfriends past or something.

  DAN: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  KRISTIN: Look, I’m on this date with you, and I kinda hate you, but Tim said you’re a good guy, so let’s just try to make the best of it, okay? I’m just me. I just met you. And I’m not the girl who hurt your feelings.

  DAN: Hurt my feelings?

  KRISTIN: I’m hoping that’s what happened. I’m hoping there’s a real reason you’re being such a jerk. We’re both nervous. Are we gonna like each other, hate each other, hook up? That has yet to be determined. But chill out. Having fun is more important. Having fun might possibly be the most important thing in the world, and almost everyone is pretty bad at it. Now, that’s ironic.

  DAN: Uh-huh.

  KRISTIN: How do you feel about fun, Dan?

  DAN: I, I’m okay with it.

  KRISTIN: So am I.

  DAN: Kristin …

  KRISTIN: Yeah.

  DAN: Let’s have fun.

  (CYNDI rings her chimes.)

  CYNDI: “You have arrived.”

  (Blackout.)

  END OF PLAY

  YOU KNOW WHO ELSE I HATE?

  Mark O’Donnell

  CHARACTERS

  TWO MEN: Drunk, his pal.

  A seedy blue-collar bar in Idaho, late night. DAVE is a truculent drunk, more ridiculous than evil. HIS PAL is more passively blotto.

  DRUNK: You know who I hate? I hate those people up in India. All wrapped up in blankets and towels. Why can’t they wear normal clothes?

  HIS PAL: I think it has to do with their religion. It’s, like, always Halloween there …

  DRUNK: Speaking of looks, you know who else I hate? Guys who grow goatees! Ugh! What is that? I say, grow a real beard, or else shave like a soldier!

  HIS PAL: Wull … Uncle Sam has a goatee.

  DRUNK: Hey! You shut up about Uncle Sam! Anyway, what he has, that’s something else. That’s old-timey, like what the devil has. (Pause.) Speaking of goatees, you know who else I hate? The French.

  HIS PAL: Yeah, well, the French …

  DRUNK: I was in this park, and this French guy was calling his dog, and he was calling it in French! Venez-ici! Venez-ici! I hate that. I mean, it’s one thing if they want to talk to each other in French, but to force a poor dog to learn it, that’s just cruel.

  HIS PAL: And where was this?

  DRUNK: Over in France. I was there by accident. Plane crash or somethin’. (Pause.) I mean, talking in French, that is so phony! (Pause.) Speaking of dogs and phonies, you know who else I hate? Those stuck-up guys who wear sunglasses whenever they walk their dogs! Like they were movie stars or something! “I’m glamorous, look at me!” And what I hate even more, these same guys make their dogs wear these real tight harnesses, so the dog can’t run or jump or anything!

  HIS PAL: Ummm … I think you’re talking about blind people there …

  DRUNK: Is that what they’re called? I hate them. And speaking of show-offs, you know who else I hate? Those guys who are too high-and-mighty for regular bicycles! No, they have to sit on their asses and ride chairs with big wheels, like they were the king passing in parade! “All hail me!”

  HIS PAL: Uhhhh … I think you’re talking about crippled people there … Or handicapped, specially challenged …

  DRUNK: Is that what they’re called? I hate them.

  HIS PAL: Well, hate, I don’t know why you’d …

  DRUNK: And speaking of show-offs, you know who else I hate? Those kinda small, skinny, pale guys with the long hair. You know, the ones who insist on opening their shirts in public and nursing those real tiny little guys with no hair? Ugh!

  HIS PAL: I, uh, I think you’re talking about women there … And, uh, babies …

  DRUNK: Is that what they’re called? I hate them. I hate foreigners.

  HIS PAL: (About to pass out.) Oooooh …

  DRUNK: The thing about foreigners, you never know what they’re thinking. At least with you and me, you know all the thoughts I’ll ever think already!

  (HIS PAL passes out; his head clunks to the table.)

  The guy can’t hold his liquor. I hate him.

  (Lights fade.)

  END OF PLAY

  CONTRIBUTORS

  ROB ACKERMAN (You Have Arrived) is a widely produced playwright whose works include Origin of the Species, made into an award-winning independent film starring Amanda Peet; Tabletop, Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble; and Icarus of Ohio, chosen for the hotINK International Festival of New Plays at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

  BILLY ARONSON’S (Reunions) short plays have been produced in seven Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathons and published in five volumes of Best American Short Plays. His full-length First Day of School received a Bay Area Critics Circle award for Best Original Script, 2009. Also: original concept/additional lyrics for Rent, book for Click Clack Moo, scripts for Beavis & Butt-head and Courage the Cowardly Dog. www.billyaronson.com.

  JOHN AUGUSTINE’S (PeopleSpeak) plays include Kent, CT at the Zipper; Back to Canton at E.S.T.; and Scab Writes a Song at HOME for Contemporary Theatre. Also at HOME was Augustine’s Confessions, an evening of one-acts including Siobhan (published in Take Ten) and Window of Opportunity (included in Best American Short Plays of 1993–94.) Recently Father’s Day and PeopleSpeak premiered at the popular Summer Shorts Festival in NYC. www.JohnAugustine.net.

  PETE BARRY (Nine Point Eight Meters per Second per Second) has authored and coauthored numerous plays, including Drop, Hangman, The Banderscott, Early Morning in the Tenement, Sex with a Mathematician, and Signs from God. He is a cofounder of the Porch Room, a film and theater production company. Pete lives in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Jean, and his daughter, Lia.

  DAN BERKOWITZ (Sourpuss) is co-chair of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and former L.A. regional rep of the Dramatists Guild. He’s written a lot of stuff that’s been produced, and hopes to write a lot more before he croaks. http://danberkowitz.com.

  ADAM BOCK’S (Three Guys and a Brenda) plays include The Receptionist (MTC, Trinity Rep, Studio Theater, Outer Critics
nomination); The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons, Outer Critics nomination); The Thugs (Soho Rep, OBIE Award); Swimming in the Shallows (Second Stage, Shotgun Players, three BATCC Awards, Clauder Award); Five Flights (Encore Theater, Rattlestick, Glickman Award); The Typographer’s Dream (Encore Theater); The Shaker Chair; Three Guys and a Brenda (Heideman Award); and We Have Always Lived in a Castle, a musical with Todd Almond.

  ERIC COBLE (H.R.) wrote some other plays too. Bright Ideas, The Dead Guy, Natural Selection, For Better, and Southern Rapture have been produced off-Broadway and other places, including productions at Manhattan Class Company, the Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons, and Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival. He also stares fondly at his Emmy nomination, the AT&T Onstage Award, and National Theatre Conference Playwriting Award.

  PHILIP DAWKINS’S (Nothing) plays include Edgar and Ellen: Bad Seeds; The Skokie Detective Charter School (Northlight Theatre Academy, www.playscripts.com); Yes to Everything! (Around the Coyote; ARS Nova); Ugly Baby (Chicago Vanguard/ Strawdog); A Still Life in Color (TUTA); Saguaro (Estrogen Fest, Estrogenius); Perfect (Side Project). Philip teaches play-writing through Chicago Dramatists, and kung fu to little, tiny children through Rising Phoenix, HI-YAH!

  ANTON DUDLEY’S (Getting Home) productions include Substitution (Soho Playhouse); Slag Heap (Cherry Lane Theatre); Honor and the River (Walnut Street Theatre); Letters to the End of the World (Theatre Row, NYC); Cold Hard Cash (Williamstown Theatre Festival); The Lake’s End (Adirondack Theatre Festival); Antarctica (Cleveland Public Theatre); and Davy & Stu and Pleaching the Coffin Sisters (both at Ensemble Studio Theatre). His work is published by Playscripts and Heinemann Press.

  CHRISTOPHER DURANG’S (Funeral Parlor) plays include A History of the American Film (Tony nomination), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (OBIE Award), Beyond Therapy, Baby with the Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo (OBIE Award, Hull Warriner Award), Laughing Wild, Durang/Durang, Betty’s Summer Vacation (OBIE Award), Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, Miss Witherspoon (Pulitzer finalist), Adrift in Macao with Peter Melnick, and Why Torture Is Wrong and the People Who Love Them. www.christopherdurang.com.

  LIZ ELLISON (Gabrielle) is a Pittsburgh-based playwright and screenwriter. She has been awarded a Steven Bochco Fellowship, the Eleanor Frost prize, and the Alexander Laing screenwriting award. Her play The Minute Hand was named a semifinalist for the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MFA in dramatic writing from Carnegie Mellon University.

  HALLEY FEIFFER (Thank You So Much for Stopping) wrote Easter Candy, produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre (Young Playwrights’ Festival XXII); her play Passion Fruit was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her film and TV credits as an actress include The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, The Messenger, Gentlemen Broncos, Flight of the Conchords, and the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce.

  PETER HANDY (Friendship), a native New Yorker, is a graduate of both Sarah Lawrence College and the dramatic writing program at Mason Gross School of the Arts. He has worked as writer, actor, director, and producer in a variety of productions on both coasts. His play East of the Sun and West of the Moon is published by Samuel French, Inc.

  JEFFREY HATCHER’S (Murderers—“Match Wits with Minka Lupino”) plays have been produced on Broadway, off-Broadway, throughout the United States, and abroad. They include Three Viewings, A Picasso, Scotland Road, and Compleat Female Stage Beauty, as well as adaptations of The Turn of the Screw, The Government Inspector, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Tuesdays with Morrie (with Mitch Albom). Film/TV: Stage Beauty, Casanova, The Duchess, and episodes of Columbo. He is a member of the Playwrights Center, Dramatists Guild, Writers Guild, and New Dramatists.

  AMY HERZOG (Christmas Present) is the author of After the Revolution, produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and at Playwrights Horizons in 2010. Other productions: Ensemble Studio Theatre, ACT in San Francisco, and the Yale School of Drama; readings/workshops: MTC, NY Stage and Film, Arena Stage in D.C., Soho Rep, and others. Amy is the 2010 playwright-in-residence at Ars Nova. MFA, Yale School of Drama.

  MIKHAIL HOROWITZ (Mere Vessels) is the author of Big League Poets (City Lights, 1978) and two collections of poetry. He has been performing poetry, music, comedy, political satire, and pataphysical acrobatics professionally since 1973, and his work is included on more than a dozen CDs, including The Blues of the Birth (Sundazed Records). His day gig? Redacting academic wapdoodle at Bard College.

  DAVID IVES (The Blizzard) is probably best-known for his evenings of one-acts, collected as All in the Timing (Vintage Books) and Time Flies (Grove Press). His full-length work to date has been collected in Polish Joke and Other Plays (Grove). He is also the author of two young-adult novels, Monsieur Eek and Scrib. He lives in New York City with his wife, Martha.

  CALEEN SINNETTE JENNINGS (Uncovered) is a professor of theater at American University, Washington, D.C. She received a Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville for her play Classyass, and a $10,000 grant from the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays for her play Inns & Outs. Her other plays include Playing Juliet/Casting Othello, Elsewhere in Elsinore, Free Like Br’er Rabbit, and Chem Mystery.

  EAN MILES KESSLER (Brotherly Love) is a BFA graduate of Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. Acting credits include: Hamlet (Hamlet, Player King, Priest) on London’s Globe Stage; Roll Your Own (Willy) off-off-Broadway at Where Eagles Dare; and Dei-GAH (Charlie and Harlan) at Rutgers University. He is also a lead writer for the New York–based theater company Inertia.

  DAN KOIS (The Rumor) is the author of Facing Future, a book about the Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. He is a film critic for the Washington Post, a contributing writer at New York magazine, and a contributor to the New York Times, The Village Voice, Slate, and The Awl. A retired improv comedian, he lives in Arlington, Virginia, and is writing a book about church.

  ERIC LANE’S (Curtain Raiser) plays have been published and performed in the United States, Canada, Europe, and China. Eric has won a Writers Guild Award, the Berrilla Kerr Award, and the La MaMa Playwright Award. Publications include Ride, Heart of the City (Dramatists Play Service), and Dancing on Checkers’ Grave (Playscripts), and Early Morning in Best American Short Plays 2008–2009 (Applause Books). www.ericlanewrites.com

  DREW LARIMORE (The Anniversary) is a playwright who currently lives in New York. His minimusical Whahoo! is published through Heuer Publishing Company, and his ten-minute play The Quintessential Rapport was a finalist in the 2002 National Ten-Minute Play Competition. Drew has worked with the Telluride Playwrights Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre MCC Playwrights Coalition, and was a 2010 Finalist for the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference.

  MARK HARVEY LEVINE (The Rental) has had hundreds of productions of his plays from New York to Seoul to Sydney to Prague, and his work has been translated into French, Hebrew, Japanese, and Portuguese. Evenings of his work have played in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Boston, and Indianapolis. Aperitivos, an evening of his plays in Portuguese, played in Brazil from 2005 to 2007. www.markharveylevine.com.

  WARREN LEIGHT (Norm-Anon) wrote Side Man, which won the Tony Award for Best Play 1999. His other theater work includes Glimmer, Glimmer & Shine, Fame Takes a Holiday, No Foreigners Beyond This Point, and James and Annie. Dark, No Sugar, a collection of his one-act plays, is published by Dramatists Play Service. He was coexecutive producer on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and is executive producer on Lights Out.

  ELIZABETH MERIWETHER (Particleboard) wrote The Mistakes Madeline Made, which premiered at Naked Angels Theater and was subsequently produced at Yale Rep and published by Dramatists Play Service. Other plays include Heddatron, an adaptation of Hedda Gabler featuring live robots, which was produced by Les Freres Corbusier and is published by Playscripts; Nicky Goes Goth, which premiered in the 2004 New York Fringe Festival; and Oliver, which will be workshopped by the Vineyard Th
eatre.

  MICHAEL MITNICK’S (Life Without Subtext) recent works include Babs the Dodo, a voyage through home shopping and loneliness; Elijah, an adventure story; Learning Russian, a tale of identity theft; Spacebar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman, a play about a bar in outer space; and The Current War, a musical about the race to light up the globe. He has an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

  MEGAN MOSTYN-BROWN’S (The Woods Are for Suckers and Chumps) plays include Girl, The Secret Lives of Losers, Lizards, The Rest of Your Life, and Objects Are Closer Than They Appear. She is published by Samuel French, and Girl can be found as a podcast on iTunes. She lives in New York City and is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company.

  MARK O’DONNELL (You Know Who Else I Hate?) won a Tony as the coauthor of the musical Hairspray, and was nominated again for Cry-Baby. His other plays include That’s It, Folks!, Strangers on Earth, and Fables for Friends. His novels include Getting over Homer and Let Nothing You Dismay. His humor and cartoons have appeared in the New Yorker, Spy, and many other publications.

  NICOLE QUINN (Sandchair Cantata) has written for HBO, Showtime, and network television. Her short-play collection odds&ends is published by Playscripts. Nicole wrote and directed Racing Daylight, which stars Academy Award nominees Melissa Leo and David Strathairn and is distributed by Vanguard Cinema International. At present she is lost two million years in the dystopic future with the novel The Gold Stone Girl.