by Eric Lane
RENO: You gonna sit down on the grass? You gonna get your butt wet. You wanna get your butt wet?
SHEILA: Yeah. I wanna get my butt wet.
RENO: Come on, now. Let's get up. (SHEILA shakes her head.) All right. We'll just sit here and get our butts wet. (RENO sits down next to SHEILA. SHEILA looks up at the stars.)
SHEILA: The stars are all milky.
RENO: Well, that's the Milky Way.
SHEILA: They're wet.
RENO: Just like your butt?
SHEILA: Yeah. Just like my butt. (SHEILA lies on the ground.)
RENO: You ain't gonna last long out here like this. They're gonna find you on the ground and they're gonna toss you in the trash with the beer bottles and the candy-gum wrappers and the hot dog buns. They're gonna clean you up with the rest of the fair. They'll pack you up with the Ferris wheel and all therides and animals. How'd you like that? To get packed away with the pigs?
SHEILA: I like pigs.
RENO: You like ' em? They stink.
SHEILA: They're cute. They're like little babies.
RENO: Don't start with that.
SHEILA: Little babies in their pens—no one to take care of them.
RENO: Your baby's got plenty of people to take care of him. He's got the doctor and the nurses—and pretty soon he'll have a nice young family with credentials—with a good job and brothers and sisters and a grandmother, probably. You can't take care of your baby.
SHEILA: I'm a tree. A tree without fruit.
RENO: Now, Sheila …
SHEILA: I have no fruit! (SHEILA is standing up.)
RENO: Sit down, Sheila. There's nothing you can do.
SHEILA: I'm gonna go get my baby back.
RENO: He's gone, Sheila. He's not yours, anymore.
SHEILA: Just ' cause I gave him away don't mean he's not mine! If I gave you my finger, it'd still be my finger, you'd just have it.
RENO: Your baby's not a finger.
SHEILA: It's unnatural.
RENO: People do it all the time.
SHEILA: I never had anything that was mine like that and I gave him away.
RENO: You couldn't handle him by yourself.
SHEILA: You could help me. You could help me raise him.
RENO: Sheila, you know that's impossible.
SHEILA: Why? Why is that impossible? We were always best friends way back since we was kids. I wish it was your baby, Reno. If that was possible.
RENO: Well, it's not.
SHEILA: But it could be like that. You could be like the man and I'll be like the woman. It was always kinda like that with me and you.
RENO: Honey, I'm sorry you had a baby you can't take care of. But I can't take care of a baby, neither. Besides, they won't let us take him back.
SHEILA: They'll let us—they will. If they see how much we love him.
RENO: You already signed the papers.
SHEILA: When they see our love—our love'll burn right through those papers. Those papers don't mean nothing but a bunch of words. They can't take away my love with a bunch of words.
RENO: It's not your love they care about. It's your word. And you gave your word that you didn't want your baby.
SHEILA: I changed my mind!
RENO: It's too late now.
SHEILA: No, it's not! (SHEILA starts to walk away.)
RENO: Where are you going?
SHEILA: I'm going to get my baby.
RENO: In your bare feet? (SHEILA looks down at her feet.)
SHEILA: What happened to my shoes?
RENO: You threw them off the Ferris wheel.
SHEILA: Well, we need to get them so I can get my baby.
RENO: Sheila—you can't even hold onto a pair of shoes. How are you gonna take care of a baby?
SHEILA: Well, I was mad.
RENO: I know. What happens when you're mad and you throw your baby out the window ' cause he won't stop crying?
SHEILA: I wouldn't throw my baby out the window.
RENO: How do you know that? What do you know about raising babies?
SHEILA: My momma raised me when she was only fourteen.
RENO: And look what happened. (Beat.)
SHEILA: You're not my friend.
RENO: Yes, I am.
SHEILA: No, you're not. If you were my friend, you'd drive me to the hospital right now and get my baby back. If it was your baby, I'd drive you to the hospital—if I could drive. But you're jealous ' cause I can have a baby and you can't. You can't get a boyfriend.
RENO: I don't want a boyfriend that gets me pregnant and leaves with the fair.
SHEILA: It's not his fault. He had to go.
RENO: Well, he didn't come back, did he?
SHEILA: He probably had another fair to go to. There's a lot of fairs around the country. Sometimes it's not the same fair that comes to town as it was the year before. Sometimes they don't have the same Ferris wheel. Sometimes they have the kind with the cages on it and sometimes they have the kind that are open and you can dangle your feet and lose your shoes and feel like you're flying or like you're falling. Sometimes it's like you're falling and flying all at once and you can't tell the difference.
RENO: Especially when you have too much to drink.
SHEILA: Even without drinking. Even without losing your baby or your boyfriend or your best friend. Even when I'm not on the Ferris wheel, I feel like I'm floating in a box above the world—and all the lights are so far away I can't tell which one is home. They might as well be the stars in the sky for all the good they do me. They might as well just disappear like the stars in the morning, like the fair every year, like my baby. (Pause.)
RENO: You haven't lost your best friend, Sheila.
SHEILA: Would you have given up your baby? If it was yours?
RENO: I don't know, Sheila. Probably. (SHEILA goes and sits on the ground by RENO, who has sat down on the crate.) You wanna go home?
SHEILA: No.
RENO: You want me to take you to the hospital?
SHEILA: I don't think they'd give him back.
RENO: Probably not.
SHEILA: I can't raise a baby. Not in my house. My daddy would throw me out. I don't have anywhere else to go.
RENO: I know.
SHEILA: I can't live by myself, Reno. I'm not like you. I can't do it by myself.
RENO: I wouldn't, either.
SHEILA: But you could. If you wanted to. If I was like you, I'd raise a whole house full of babies by myself. But I'm not like you. I wish I was. I hope my baby gets someone like you. (SHEILA rests her head on RENO' s lap. RENO strokes SHEILA's hair as the lights fade.)
CONTRIBUTORS
TAYLOR MAC BOWYER'S plays include The Hot Month (Ensemble Studio Theatre'S Next-Step Fellowship), Red Tide Blooming, Blue Grotto, Dilating (an evening of one-acts) and the solo play Okay. He has performed in venues such as Joe'S Pub, FEZ, and the San Francisco Opera House. Acting credits include work with the Jean Cocteau Repertory, Circle East, and many regional theatres across the country.
LAURA SHAINE CUNNINGHAM is the author of Sleeping Arrangements and A Place in the Country, first published in The New Yorker magazine, and now in hardcover and paperback editions. Her plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre, in New York and London. Her first play, Beautiful Bodies, appears in Plays for Actresses and is widely produced.
ANTHONY DAVID, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, is a historian who has spent most of his adult life in Germany and Israel. David has published a book on the German-Jewish scholar of the Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem (Harvard University Press, 2001). In 2003, Metropolitan Books published his book The Patron.
STEVEN DIETZ'S twenty-plus plays and adaptations have been seen at over one hundred regional theatres, as well as off-Broadway. International productions of his work have been seen in England, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Singapore, Slovenia, and South Africa. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
CHRISTOPHER DURANG was born in Montclair, New Jers
ey. He is author of A History of the American Film, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It AllforYou, Beyond Therapy, Laughing Wild, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Betty's Summer Vacation, and Durang Durang. He is one third of the cabaret act “Chris Durang and Dawne.”
LINDA EISENSTEIN'S plays and musicals include Three the Hard Way, Rehearsing Cyrano, Discordia, Star Wares: The Next Generation, and twenty-four one-act plays. Her work has been produced in New York, regionally, and abroad. Awards include the Gilmore Creek Playwriting Competition, Sappho'S Symposium Competition, and three Ohio Arts Council Fellowships. She is a member of the Cleveland Play House Playwrights' Unit.
SIMON FILL was born in Hong Kong. His full-length plays include Post Punk Life and Naked UnderYour Clothes. Night Visits won the Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville. He was an A.S.K. exchange playwright with the Royal Court Theatre. His plays have been produced in New York City, regionally, and internationally.
CRAIG FOLS is an actor and playwright who has been working on new plays in New York for several years. As an actor, he has appeared notably in Lanie Robertson'S Nasty Little Secrets at Primary Stages and in his own play Buck Simple at La Mama. He has received the Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award and BMI'S Harrington Award. His first play, Buck Simple, was published in The Best American Short Plays 1994-95.
SIGRID HEATH —actor, playwright, director, teacher, journalist— was a recipient of the Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award in 2000. An active member of Actors& Writers, she contributes regularly to the annual short play festival. Wingbone, her one-woman play about aviatrix Beryl Markham, premiered at Actors& Writers and has seen several successful productions.
DAVID IVES is probably best known for his evenings of one-act comedies: All In the Timing (available from Vintage Books) and Time Flies (available from Grove). His young-adult novel Monsieur Eek is published by HarperCollins. His most recent play is the full-length comic fantasia Polish Joke.
CALEEN SINNETTE JENNINGS is professor of theatre and director of the theatre/music theatre program at American University in Washington, D.C. She teaches playwriting, acting, directing, and academic courses in theatre. She also directs for main stage. She is a recipient of a 1999 Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award and a 2002 Heideman Award from the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
HONOUR KANE'S plays have been produced by The Public Theatre New Works, Sydney'S 1995 Mardi Gras Arts Festival, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Her work has been developed by London'S Royal Court Theatre, the Australian National Playwrights Conference, and Portland Center Stage. A member of New Dramatists, she holds an NEA fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.
ERIC LANE'S Times of War premiered at the Adirondack Theatre Festival and has won numerous honors including the Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award. Plays include Shellac, Dancing on Checkers' Grave, and Cater-Waiter. He has written and produced two short films, First Breath and Cater-Waiter, which he also directed. Honors include a Writers Guild Award, the La Mama Playwright Development Award, and numerous Yaddo fellowships.
EDWARD BOK LEE was born in Fargo, North Dakota, and educated throughout the United States, Korea, Russia, and Central Asia. Performing venues of his plays include the Taipei Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, Theater Mu, and the Guthrie Theater Lab. A two-time national Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, he also writes poetry, spoken word, and fiction.
WARREN LEIGHT'S Side Man won multiple awards, including the 1999 Tony Award for Best Play His other recent plays include Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine; No Foreigners Beyond This Point; and James and Annie. Warren is the vice president of the Writers Guild of America, East council, a member of the Dramatists Guild council, and a writer/producer on Law& Order: Criminal Intent.
ROMULUS LINNEY is the author of three novels, many short stories, and about twenty short and twenty full-length plays, staged throughout the United States and abroad. They include The Sorrows of Frederick, Holy Ghosts, Heathen Valley, Childe Byron, and 2. He is a member of the American Academies of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Letters.
DONALD MARGULIES received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for his play Dinner with Friends. His plays include Collected Stories, The Model Apartment, What'S Wrong with This Picture?, The Loman Family Picnic, and Found a Peanut. Honors include an Obie Award, grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, NYFA, and the NEA. Mr. Margulies is an instructor at Yale University and a council member of the Dramatists Guild.
SUSAN MILLER won the 2002 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play A Map of Doubt and Rescue. She holds two Obie Awards for Nasty Rumors and Final Remarks and My Left Breast, which premiered in Louisville'S Humana Festival. Other plays include Flux and It's Our Town, Too, and the indie film Lady Beware, starring Diane Lane. Miller is currently a consulting producer on the Showtime series, Earthlings. She is recipient of a 2003 John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in playwriting.
CHIORI MIYAGAWA'S plays include Nothing Forever, published in Positive /Negative Women; Jamaica Avenue, published in Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience on Stage; Woman Killer, published in Plays & Playwright 2001; and Yesterday's Window published in Take Ten. She is a recipient of many grants and awards, including a 2002 Alfred Sloan/Ensemble Studio Theatre Commission.
ITAMAR MOSES'S plays include Outrage (Bloomington Playwrights Project New Play Award) and Bach at Leipzig (Southwest Theatre Association New Play Award; Dallas Playwrights Theatre New Play Award; S. F. Playwrights Center New Play Award). He holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from NYU'S Tisch School of the Arts, and is an active member of the Dramatists Guild.
SEAN O'CONNOR is a writer, actor, and teacher. His plays have been performed at the Zipper Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Neighborhood Playhouse, Cap 21 Stage, and New York Performance Works. He has an M.F.A. in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.
MARK O'DONNELL'S plays include That's It, Folks!, Fables for Friends, Tots in Tinseltown, and Strangers on Earth. He is the Tony Award—winning coauthor of the Broadway musical Hairspray. Among his books are Vertigo Park, Getting Over Homer, and Let Nothing You Dismay. His humor has appeared in The New Yorker, Spy, McSweeney's, The Atlantic, and Esquire.
DAEL ORLANDERSMITH was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Yellowman and the 1999 Susan Smith Blackburn Award and is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and the Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights. Her plays include Liar, Liar, Beauty's Daughter (Obie Award), Monster, and The Gimmick.
RICH ORLOFF is one of five playwrights to receive the 2003 Dramatists Guild playwriting fellowship. A prolific author of short plays, four of his one-act comedies have been published in the annual Best American Short Plays anthology series. More about Rich'S plays, including his ten award-winning full-length comedies, can be found at his website, richorloff.com.
JOE PINTAURO is a playwright, poet, and fiction writer. His plays include Snow Orchid, Raft of the Medusa, Men's Lives, and The Dead Boy. He has written several award-winning books of poetry and the novels State of Grace and Cold Hands, which The NewYork Times named one of the best novels of the year. Pintauro was the recipient of the 2001 chair in Theatre, at Saint Mary'S, Notre Dame.
CRAIG POSPISIL is the author of Months on End and Somewhere in Between, which are published by Dramatists Play Service and have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, and around the country. Other plays include The Dunes, Catch as Catch Can, and numerous short plays written for the stage and radio. He edited the collections Outstanding Men's Monologues 2001-2002 and Outstanding Women's Monologues 2001-2002.
TONI PRESS-COFFMAN'S plays have been performed at theatres throughout the country, including productions at Actors Theatre of Louisville'S Humana Festival and Purple Rose Theatre. Plays include Touch, Stand, Bodies and Hearts, and Trucker Rhapsody. Honors include an NEA/TCG Playwright Residency, an Arizona Commission on the Arts grant, and the Brodkin Award. She lives in Tu
cson, Arizona.
CLAIRE REEVE was born and raised in New York City. Stuck is Ms. Reeve'S first published play. Currently employed as a social worker, Ms. Reeve studies playwriting with Tina Howe.
ELAINE ROMERO'S plays have appeared at Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Women'S Project and Productions, Arizona Theatre Company, and The Working Theatre. She has been a guest artist at South Coast Repertory and the Mark Taper Forum. The Pew Foundation and the NEA have supported her award-winning plays, which are published by Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, and UA Press.
SUSAN SANDLER'S plays include Crossing Delancey, The Moaner, The Renovation, and The Burial Society. Her plays have been produced in New York City, at regional theatres across the country, and around the world. She is a playwright member of HB Playwrights' Theater and Ensemble Studio Theatre. Screenplays and teleplays for Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Hallmark, and CBS include Crossing Delancey and Friends at Last.
NINA SHENGOLD won the ABC Playwright Award for Homestead ers and the Writers Guild Award for Labor of Love. Her ten-minute plays (including Finger Food, Women and Shoes, Everything Must Go, Handyman Special, There Goes the Neigh borhood, No Shoulder, Forty to Life, and others) are widely performed. She has just completed her first novel, Clearcut.
DIANA SON is the author of Boy, Fishes, R.A.W. ('Cause I'm a Woman) and Stop Kiss. They have been produced at The Joseph Papp Public Theatre, LaJolla Playhouse, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Seattle Rep, Woolly Mammoth, and others. Stop Kiss was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle and a Drama League award. She is a member of New Dramatists and the Dramatists Guild.
ALISON WEISS is a native of Manhattan, where her plays have been workshopped and produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre and HERE Arts Center. As an actress she has appeared in New York theatre productions including Spike Heels (NYU) and Boys'Life at the Blue Heron Arts Center (Walter Carlson Players).
MARY LOUISE WILSON coauthored the play Full Gallop, which had a successful run off-Broadway and subsequently in London, France, Italy, Australia, Brazil, and regional theatres in the United States. She has written articles for The NewYork Times, American Theatre, and The New Yorker. She is also a veteran actor of stage, television, and film.