THE PARIS LETTER
BY JON ROBIN BAITZ
Although Sandy has been married to Katie for some twenty years, he remained friends with ANTON, his ex-lover, until Burt came on the scene, and Sandy fell for him.
SCENE
An empty stage
TIME
February 2001
ANTON: Yes. Once he was married, all of Sandy’s raging internal wars had been more or less won. It seemed.
Yes. It was in the 1980s that he relaxed. Happiness deepened and sharpened his instincts for the work he did. Katie became well known, beloved in New York, writing two terrific cookbooks and giving sold-out, highly coveted classes at the restaurant.
And their home! A gorgeous white living room, comfortable, piled high with books and flooded with light! It was one of those places you just want to be in, and I spent a lot of time there. With Sandy, Katie, and Sam, my magnificent godson, who grew into a wise, clever, funny and bold boy, adored by his mother and cherished by his stepfather.
And then Burt happened.
I don’t want to bore you with facts, as they were exhaustively reported for the benefit of all. The press gloated over, and endlessly explored, the thrilling “circumstances” surrounding Burt Sarris and his rather predictable, Icarus-like fall. And suicide. They made fun of the young movie stars, rock stars, and Hollywood agents who lost fortunes to Burt. Poor Burty. He attempted to stanch the flow from the upper reaches of his clientele with money from the quote “non-famous, non-celebrities” . . . who collapsed. Rather like dominos. Bang. Bang. Bang. (HE takes a deep breath and gets his bearings .) In November of the new century’s first year . . . down go the Meyersons, the Bermans, the Golds, the Orrs—these ex-clients of Sandy were now dispossessed—stripped of privilege—wandering in the new American fiscal diaspora, like all the other poor schmucks—wondering where their good luck had gone. . . . (Beat.) Yes. There is no more money. Sandy’s personal fortune of seventy-five million dollars to stanch the flow, gone! The house on West Tenth Street, gone. The few remaining pieces of art and a tiny island in Maine, all gone . . . the creditors took it all. (Beat. Sigh. The lights are changing slowly.) Right. It is February 2001, the night my story began. . . . Remember? It is very late, or very early in the morning, 2 AM. Sandy has just left Burt’s, yes, just left Burt’s, unaware that Burt has taken his advice and killed himself. Earlier that day, there had been a spate of wild phone action, followed by frantic meetings with the vengeful lawyers of the panicked ex-clients of Sandy, who felt as if they had been handed over to Burt Sarris very much like lambs to the slaughter.
THE PAVILION
BY CRAIG WRIGHT
At their twentieth high school reunion, classmates (played mostly by the male NARRATOR) reminisce about and/or mourn old times. In this speech, the male NARRATOR becomes LISA, who organized the festivities.
SCENE
The Pavilion, an old dance hall in the fictional town of Pine City, Minnesota
TIME
The present
NARRATOR: It’s eight thirty-two. The dinner dishes have been cleared away by the teenagers in their black pants and white shirts, thirty-five dollars for one night of work. And there’s a woman standing on the stage, talking into a microphone that obviously isn’t working, and then suddenly, with a pop and a squeal, it is.
(The NARRATOR becomes LISA. Note: the year of the graduating class can be moved forward to reflect the change in production date.)
NARRATOR: (As LISA, to audience.) Is everybody having a good time? Fabulous! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Lisa Gulbranson, and I know you’ve all been here for a while, having a wonderful dinner and catching up with each other, but now let me formally welcome you, on behalf of the whole reunion committee, (which is essentially me and Angie), to the Class of 1985’s Twentieth Reunion! Yay! There’s some school spirit! Pine City Panthers, P-C-P! I see a lot of familiar faces out there! And don’t everybody forget we’ve got Skippy Schouviller from Ingebretsen Photography set up right over there all night taking pictures, so if you want your picture taken with the old gang, you just talk to him.
Now, when we first started planning this party, Angie and I thought it would be fabulous if we could get The Mustangs back together to play. But it didn’t take long for us to realize only two of the original Mustangs were still with us: Eddie Gieselhardt and Peter Mollberg. Then we never got an RSVP from Peter . . . naughty. But, even worse, last month, as many of you probably have heard, Eddie was killed in a car accident on his way to a gig in Fargo. So when Peter called and told us last week he’d be coming, I asked him if he could just play us all a song, to remember and whatever, in Eddie’s honor. So, before we head into the dancing portion of the evening, let me introduce to you, and it makes me kinda sad to say this, the Class of 1985’s Vice-President, and the only surviving member of The Mustangs, Peter Mollberg!
THE PAVILION
BY CRAIG WRIGHT
PETER MOLLBERG returns to his twentieth high-school reunion to confront his guilt over deserting his pregnant girlfriend, Kari, after their senior year. HE confesses to an old classmate, now a minister, that he’s never been able to get past that terrible mistake.
SCENE
The Pavilion, an old dance hall in the fictional town of Pine City, Minnesota
TIME
The present
PETER: It’s like . . .
[NARR: (Bored.) What?]
PETER: No, you don’t want to hear about this.
[NARR: (Relieved.) OK.]
PETER: It’s like when I said No to Kari back then, when I left town?
[NARR: (Slightly impatient.) Yeah?]
PETER: It’s like I got on the wrong train, you know? And I’ve been on this train now for twenty years, and Jesus, I don’t want to go where this train is going, I really don’t.
[NARR: Where do you want to go?]
PETER: I want to go . . . I want to go where I maybe could have gone with her, you know?. . . if I had been more . . . I don’t know, strong or something. When I saw Kari for the first time, Smoke, I’ll never forget it; it was like the first or second week of high school and I walked into the audiovisual lab and there she was. And I swear—I couldn’t have put this into words back then, but it’s all I think about lately—it was really like I recognized her or something. And I don’t mean it like we’d met before or anything. We’d never met. It was just—it was as if in her face—in her beauty—I was finally seeing the beauty of everything, you know?. . . the unreachable beauty of the whole world that I’d always felt inside and tried to hold onto but never could, it was all in her. The whole universe had articulated itself in her. To me. That’s just how I saw it. And I just knew that if I could be with her—by her side, you know?—then I could be alive and be part of things. I’d at least have a chance. Now I know it sounds crazy, Smoke, I know, given everything that’s happened, and there’s a lot of water gone under the bridge, and a lot of time has passed, and there’s been a lot of stupid shit and I’ve done most of it, but when I see her now, I still feel the same way. I look at her and I still see it, I see her face and I think, “Oh, there you are—the world. Where have you been?” I love her, you know? I screwed up back then, there’s no getting around it, but I love her. I think she’s great. I love her.
[NARR: Have you told her that?
PETER: No.
NARR: Don’t.]
A PICASSO
BY JEFFREY HATCHER
Under interrogation by a German art critic, PABLO PICASSO is asked to authenticate an early drawing so the Nazis can burn an original Picasso. On the eve of his sixtieth birthday, HE relates the following account of the painting’s origin, to either enlighten or mislead the interrogator, Miss Fischer.
SCENE
A vault below the streets of Paris
TIME
After lunch on a late October day, 1941
PICASSO: (Interrupts.) I was never “little”! I was the firstborn. And I was born dead. No breath. The family
wailed to see my face, so blue. My first memory is the sound of crying. My mother, my grandmother, aunts. Like a funeral. When they saw I had no life, they told my father to come in so he could say a prayer over my dead body. I could hear the Latin through the tears. His brother, my uncle, came into the room with him, he was smoking a cigar. He looked down at me for a long moment. And then my uncle grabbed my body, sucked on his cigar, put his mouth to mine . . . and blew! All that smoke, filling my lungs! I started to cough and cry and scream! I was breathing! The smoke brought me back to life! Men’s smoke and women’s tears! My father said it took Heaven and Hell to birth me, and he was right! Maybe that’s why they pampered me, kept me in curls and bonnets and dresses. Pablito had everything but tits.
[MISS FISCHER: “Pablito?”]
PICASSO: Pablito Ruiz. Ruiz. Stupid, dull name. Like Smith or Duval or . . . Fischer. I got rid of it soon as I could. I took my mother’s name. Picasso! Pablo Picasso! Looks better on the painting. Sounds better when you come into a room! My father always resented that. He’d say, “You are a Ruiz!” I’d say, “So is half of Spain.”
When I was 8, my mother was with child again. Everyone was happy. “Oh, good! At last a brother for Pablito!” It was a girl. Her name was Maria de la Concepcion. Everyone was very unhappy, but not me. The first time I saw her . . . I fell in love. Her eyes, her curls. She’d watch me paint. I’d tell her, “Conchita, I am going to be a great painter. My paint and my brushes are my arms and my eyes.” And she would say, “Yes, Pablo.” Never “Pablito.” To her I was always “Pablo.”
Then Conchita got sick. The women prayed, the men prayed. But their prayers were beggars’ prayers. “Please God! Pity her, God!” I knew even then if there was a God he was not like that. God does not respond to begging! God wants promises! God makes bargains! So I sneaked into Conchita’s room one night. She was asleep, I could hear her little chest heave up and down. I went to the window and flung it open and knelt at the ledge, with my hands together and my eyes shut tight, like a good little Catholic boy. “God! Listen to me! My sister Conchita is dying. Make her well. Make her live. You do that . . . and I will give up painting. Forever.”
The next day . . . miracle!. . . she begins to get better. Her breathing, her face! My beloved sister was getting well! I started to pack away my brushes, my paper. But I couldn’t. They were my arms, my eyes. I could not put them away.
So I opened my own window . . . and I took back my bargain from God . . .
The next morning Conchita was dead. I went into her room and looked at her face. Cold and still, her hair flat with her sweat. So . . . I lit a match and let it burn to my fingers and then began to draw. I made her hair curly again. And I gave her her favorite bonnet. And I opened her eyes.
I hid the drawing in my room; I would never show it to anyone. But the day of the funeral, I found my father standing next to my bed, holding it in his hand. I was afraid. Did he know I had bargained my sister away? But all he said was . . . “I see you made a self-portrait.” He thought it was me. Like you did.
THE PILGRIM PAPERS
BY STEPHEN TEMPERLEY
SQUANTO, a flirtatious Native American with a Cockney accent, greets the recently arrived Pilgrims as they are about to celebrate Thanksgiving.
SCENE
Plymouth
TIME
The 1620s
SQUANTO: Squanto’s the name. But you can call me Phil.
[WINSLOW: How’s this? The savage speaks English?
BRADFORD: (Cautions him.) Mr. Winslow Sir . . .
WINSLOW: From whence comes such fluency? Is’t sorcery? Or some enchantment?
SQUANTO: That’s easily told, sunshine.] ‘Twas like this. I was trollin’ about the beach mindin’ me own business—over there by that great big rock—when a slaver jumps up and grabs me. Next thing you know I’m in Malaga and he’s sold me to an English lordship. Proper gent he was. Lovely manners, dead posh. Took me to London to be his . . . (Searches for the word.) companion. (Winks at Ned in a conspiratorial manner.) That was the life. Spoiled me rotten. Never wore nothing ’cept silk next to my skin. Look at me now! Rabbit and seashells! Anyway, we’s on holiday in Torremolinos, Reg and me, when I pop in this place down by the beach for a quick pick-me-up and there’s all these pirates playin’ snooker. Well! We hit it off right away. Strawberry daiquiris flowin’ like water. They’re all showin’ off their tattoos and flexin’ their muscles and the next thing you know I wake up on board the Bonny Buccaneer bound for Tripoli. Lovely it was! Fresh flowers in the cabins, chocolates on your pillow, five-star dinners, everything first class. Anyway, we’re cruisin’ around, out past the Indies . . . Cathay . . . you name it . . . and on the way back they plan to stop off at Guyana—no, tell a lie, Santo Domingo—for a spot of pillage, when we get wrecked off the Tortugas. Turns out I’m the only one can swim. All the others went down with the ship. Singin’ rude songs to the end. So. There I was, stuck on an island alone. Till a whaler stops off on his way to Greenland and offers me a lift. Ghastly ship. Fish guts everywhere. Frightful journey. And when I get home what do I find? All my lot’s caught the measles off some buggery, bollocky sailors and snuffed it. So I’m the last of my kind! Always was, if you ask me. Pamets, we was. Part of the tribe of the Wampanoags. Allied with the Greater Iroquois Confederation.
(HE gestures vaguely, [leaning heavily on Ned.)]
They live that way. But you! What brings you here? I say, anyone fancy a toke? (Offers his pipe around.) No? It’s good stuff. Don’t worry. Got plenty more. Raised a super crop last year.
THE PILLOWMAN
BY MARTIN MCDONAGH
KATURIAN is a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is being interrogated about the gruesome content of many of his stories and their similarities to a series of child murders. As HE reads what HE declares is his “best story,” HE enjoys his own words, its details, and its twists.
SCENE
A police interrogation room
TIME
The present
KATURIAN: (Pause.) Um, ‘Once upon a time in a tiny cobble-streeted town on the banks of a fast-flowing river, there lived a little boy who did not get along with the other children of the town; they picked on and bullied him because he was poor and his parents were drunkards and his clothes were rags and he walked around barefoot. The little boy, however, was of a happy and dreamy disposition, and he did not mind the taunts and the beatings and the unending solitude. He knew that he was kind-hearted and full of love and that someday someone somewhere would see this love inside him and repay him in kind. Then, one night, as he sat nursing his newest bruises at the foot of the wooden bridge that crossed the river and led out of town, he heard the approach of a horse and cart along the dark, cobbled street, and as it neared he saw that its driver was dressed in the darkest of robes, the black hood of which bathed his craggy face in shadow and sent a shiver of fear through the little boy’s body. Putting his fear aside, the boy took out the small sandwich that was to be his supper that night and, just as the cart was about to pass onto and over the bridge, he offered it up to the hooded driver to see if he would like some. The cart stopped, the driver nodded, got down and sat beside the little boy for a while, sharing the sandwich and discussing this and that. The driver asked the boy why he was barefoot and ragged and all alone, and as the boy told the driver of his poor, hard life, he eyed the back of the driver’s cart; it was piled high with small, empty animal cages, all foul-smelling and dirt-lined, and just as the boy was about to ask what kind of animals it was had been inside them, the driver stood up and announced that he had to be on his way. “But before I go,” the driver whispered, “because you have been so kindly to an old weary traveller in offering half of your already meagre portions, I would like to give you something now, the worth of which today you may not realise, but one day, when you are a little older, perhaps, I think you will truly value and thank me for. Now close your eyes.” And so the little boy did what he was told and closed his eyes, an
d from a secret inner pocket of his robes the driver pulled out a long, sharp and shiny meat cleaver, raised it high in the air and brought it scything down onto the boy’s right foot, severing all five of his muddy little toes. And as the little boy sat there in gaping silent shock, staring blankly off into the distance at nothing in particular, the driver gathered up his bloody toes, tossed them away to the gaggle of rats that had begun to gather in the gutters, got back onto his cart, and quietly rode on over the bridge, leaving the boy, the rats, the river and the darkening town of Hamelin far behind him.’
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