Vine Street
grooveamatic
Posts: 1,374
Act I
The stage is sparsely decorated: we see only an old, tattered couch and a matching loveseat, a used, varnished coffee table (which is very low to the ground) and an entertainment center which seems to have been bought in the early Nineties. The entertainment center houses a 19-inch television, a VCR, a stereo, and some books. It is not important what type of stereo it is, except that it is big. The rest of the stage is black. Lights should be concentrated mainly on the set dressing. Director and Lighting Designer use discretion when lighting the wings of the stage. A feeling of barrenness should be achieved. Also, we should be made to feel that the entertainment center is, in fact, the “center” of this tableaux. An armchair can be added to the set, but it will not be used.
Enter Cassie and Willie, a young married couple. Willie is in his early thirties, thin, Bohemian. Cassie is in her mid-twenties, short, artsy. The couple stand and look at the couch for three beats, in silence.
Willie: I really don’t know. He could have peed on it.
Cassie: I really don’t know. I didn’t think he was that absurd.
Willie: Absurd? He’s just a drunk. That’s not absurd, it’s terrifyingly standard.
Cassie: Smell it.
Willie: Why should I smell it? I took care of that teenager he got drunk last week. She wouldn’t stop crying. I had to hold her down to keep her from running into the street! You smell it.
Cassie: Oh, what a way to begin our New Year’s Eve! Why don’t we just pretend it’s not there? Everything goes away eventually.
Willie: What a way to see the world.
Cassie: It’s no different than the way you see it. I just word it more simply.
Willie (sitting on the loveseat): Neither of us sees the world that way at all, and you know it. Nothing goes away.
Cassie: Not even farts?
Willie: Not even farts. Every fart that’s ever been farted is still hanging in a major pocket of collective fart consciousness, above Greenland somewhere. Where’s my tea?
Cassie: You’re going to turn into tea.
Willie: Yes, Mother.
Cassie: Maybe that’s tea on the couch. It leaked out of you because your body was fully saturated.
Willie: You become more ridiculous with each passing sentence.
Cassie (sitting on Willie’s lap): Isn’t that why you love me?
Willie: No.
Cassie: Then why do you?
Willie: Because you’ve always been willing to smell the couch when we suspect our roommate has peed on it. Oh, and those canned hams you keep in the back of your pants.
Cassie: I can never decide if that’s cute or annoying.
Willie: Things are usually both.
Enter Seth. He is short—about the same height as Cassie--, squat, and slovenly, yet possessing of a tremendously handsome face. He is unshaven, with a two or three day growth of hair on his face. (Under no circumstances should Seth be portrayed with an actual beard.) He enters and sits immediately on the couch, precisely in the spot Cassie and Willy had been looking at.
Seth: So we ready for this New Year’s Eve or what, folks?! I am ready to rock this house!
Willie: I’ve never cared much about New Year’s Eve.
Seth: Nobody does! That’s why it’s such a popular holiday.
Cassie: I have no idea what to do tonight. It always seems like everyone in the whole world has something amazing planned and I—we—end up having an essentially normal evening. Just once I would like to feel as though I—we—brought the New Year in with some kind of grand style, some form of eloquence or transcendence, something larger than life, or—hell, something smaller than life, so long as it was different from life.
Seth: Now you’re talking, Cassie! Bring on the world, I say! Just make sure the world has gin, menthol cigarettes and a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
Willie: I really don’t know. Our friend Jen is coming over. I just hope she’s not as crazy as she used to be.
Seth: What? Who is this vixen?
Cassie: A friend of Willie’s from college. We hadn’t seen her in a few years, then we ran into her at the guitar store last week and invited her over. You’ll probably really like her, Seth.
Seth: Oh yeah?
Cassie: Yeah. She’s—
Enter Jen. She is chubby and short, yet wholesomely attractive. She is dressed ridiculously—a tall, multi-colored, plush hat, bright green pants, a Confederate Army uniform shirt, and a pink, feathery scarf which she never removes, and shin-length brown Doc Martin boots. Costume Designer should add little or nothing to this outfit. Jen is loud and animated. Her body movements are fluid yet exaggerated. Jen acts as though she knows she is in a play.
Jen: I am so totally here! Bring on 2002! Who wants to get drunk? Who wants to get high? Who wants to run screaming outside just to show the world we’re here, just to show them they can’t stop us, just to take that proverbial road not taken, to shake up the Misters and Ma’ams and goody-two-shoes and the Elvis lovers and the floor boards of that great stoic brainiac in the sky? Who wants to fuck my boots and shit in my hair?
Willy: I really don’t know.
Curtain
Act II
Two hours later.
The stage is now set to resemble a front porch. We see a white front door (with screen door), a white overhanging awning, two white plastic chairs and an ashtray on a milk crate. Lighting should be even lower now, as we are out-of-doors at night. We should feel intimate with a small set centered on the stage. All four characters are present. Willie and Cassie occupy the chairs, Seth and Jen are standing, although they are both frequently moving; their movements are short of pacing but more than fidgeting. Everyone has a drink in their hands. All four are smokers and occasionally light up. (Good luck finding a playhouse that allows this nowadays. However, it is necessary. ‘Miming’ the smoking will not do.)
Cassie: But then where can feminism go from there? I mean, is that it’s logical conclusion?
Jen: Who knows? Dworkin wouldn’t have it any other way, but of course, she’s dead now.
Cassie: All the best ones die.
Seth: Yes, and the worst ones, too.
Jen: I just can’t get over the fact that your walls are white. Off-white, no less! I mean, c’mon, everyone’s walls are off-white! I really pegged you two (addressing Cassie and Willie) as less conformist than that. I thought I’d come over and find pink and camouflage and Sistine Chapel type stuff painted on your walls.
Willie: They’re just walls.
Jen: Nothing is just a wall! A wall is a barrier or an enclosure, a comfort or a menace, a home or a prison. You can’t just go through your life looking at what the last person who lived here thought was acceptable, was easy-on-the-eyes, was relaxing or comforting or homogenous or sane! That’s like living someone else’s life—or someone else’s version of life, or what passed for life for some forty-year-old single mother with two kids who liked to watch Regis and Kathy Lee after she got the little squirts onto the school bus. Did you keep her couch, too? How about her shower curtain? Willy, do you picture her face when you’re balls-deep in Cassie? Of course not! You’re not living her life, you’re living yours, so why do you want her walls?
Seth (to Jen): I’m in love with you. (Nobody seems to hear him say this.)
Willie (to Jen): So what should we do about our carpet? Rip that out, spend thousands of dollars just on principle? Besides, we rent this place, we can’t do whatever we like.
Cassie: And I quite like our carpet, anyway.
Jen: Oh of course there are practical concerns here. You have to live out loud, as far as you’re able. I understand that. But you’ve got to do what you can. You’ve got to try to be heard.
Willie (to Jen): Did you just use the phrase ‘live out loud’? Because you can’t be Thoreau one minute, and Oprah the next. If you’re going to be so on-message, you’ve got to choose your words carefully or you’ll dilute yourself.
Jen: Thoreau? I’ve never been Thoreau. Seth, was I being Thoreau?
Seth: I’m in love with you.
Jen: See? Seth thinks it’s more of a Kafka thing.
The lights all go down except for a spotlight on Seth. The other three characters are now ‘miming’ having a conversation. We see them, in the dark, talking and gesturing, but we cannot hear them. Seth watches them for a full ten seconds, with visible beaming affection. Then he turns from them and walks to the lip of the stage. He now addresses the audience.
Seth: Well, hello there. I suppose this wasn’t much of a play, was it? There’s not much of a plot. It’s just some people talking for a few minutes. We didn’t really follow those pesky “guidelines” (here Seth does ‘air quotes’) that people have set up for plays to follow. Well—Act One is a rather nice, tidy Act One, but then it’s just like we got sick of pretense and just talked about our theme, like the playwright just wanted to get it over with so he or she could go take a long shower. And I hope that they did. But, what was our theme? Was it about walls, or houses? Or was it love? Or roommates? Or the change that comes with a new year, a new house, or a new love interest? Well, I know, for me, I’ve gotta ask how much difference there is between Love, and a House, and Change, because maybe we’re dealing with just one theme, no? I’m not suggesting there is no difference between a house and love—I’m just saying maybe it’s something we could think about. Maybe it’s something we could put in our meat grinder and see if sausage comes out the other end. Ah, I have no idea what I’m talking about anymore. And I haven’t the energy to summon up a compelling and dramatic end to all this. Thanks for being here and watching a caricature of a memory. Now go home and paint your walls. Or don’t. That’s a choice that should always be up to you.
CURTAIN
The stage is sparsely decorated: we see only an old, tattered couch and a matching loveseat, a used, varnished coffee table (which is very low to the ground) and an entertainment center which seems to have been bought in the early Nineties. The entertainment center houses a 19-inch television, a VCR, a stereo, and some books. It is not important what type of stereo it is, except that it is big. The rest of the stage is black. Lights should be concentrated mainly on the set dressing. Director and Lighting Designer use discretion when lighting the wings of the stage. A feeling of barrenness should be achieved. Also, we should be made to feel that the entertainment center is, in fact, the “center” of this tableaux. An armchair can be added to the set, but it will not be used.
Enter Cassie and Willie, a young married couple. Willie is in his early thirties, thin, Bohemian. Cassie is in her mid-twenties, short, artsy. The couple stand and look at the couch for three beats, in silence.
Willie: I really don’t know. He could have peed on it.
Cassie: I really don’t know. I didn’t think he was that absurd.
Willie: Absurd? He’s just a drunk. That’s not absurd, it’s terrifyingly standard.
Cassie: Smell it.
Willie: Why should I smell it? I took care of that teenager he got drunk last week. She wouldn’t stop crying. I had to hold her down to keep her from running into the street! You smell it.
Cassie: Oh, what a way to begin our New Year’s Eve! Why don’t we just pretend it’s not there? Everything goes away eventually.
Willie: What a way to see the world.
Cassie: It’s no different than the way you see it. I just word it more simply.
Willie (sitting on the loveseat): Neither of us sees the world that way at all, and you know it. Nothing goes away.
Cassie: Not even farts?
Willie: Not even farts. Every fart that’s ever been farted is still hanging in a major pocket of collective fart consciousness, above Greenland somewhere. Where’s my tea?
Cassie: You’re going to turn into tea.
Willie: Yes, Mother.
Cassie: Maybe that’s tea on the couch. It leaked out of you because your body was fully saturated.
Willie: You become more ridiculous with each passing sentence.
Cassie (sitting on Willie’s lap): Isn’t that why you love me?
Willie: No.
Cassie: Then why do you?
Willie: Because you’ve always been willing to smell the couch when we suspect our roommate has peed on it. Oh, and those canned hams you keep in the back of your pants.
Cassie: I can never decide if that’s cute or annoying.
Willie: Things are usually both.
Enter Seth. He is short—about the same height as Cassie--, squat, and slovenly, yet possessing of a tremendously handsome face. He is unshaven, with a two or three day growth of hair on his face. (Under no circumstances should Seth be portrayed with an actual beard.) He enters and sits immediately on the couch, precisely in the spot Cassie and Willy had been looking at.
Seth: So we ready for this New Year’s Eve or what, folks?! I am ready to rock this house!
Willie: I’ve never cared much about New Year’s Eve.
Seth: Nobody does! That’s why it’s such a popular holiday.
Cassie: I have no idea what to do tonight. It always seems like everyone in the whole world has something amazing planned and I—we—end up having an essentially normal evening. Just once I would like to feel as though I—we—brought the New Year in with some kind of grand style, some form of eloquence or transcendence, something larger than life, or—hell, something smaller than life, so long as it was different from life.
Seth: Now you’re talking, Cassie! Bring on the world, I say! Just make sure the world has gin, menthol cigarettes and a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
Willie: I really don’t know. Our friend Jen is coming over. I just hope she’s not as crazy as she used to be.
Seth: What? Who is this vixen?
Cassie: A friend of Willie’s from college. We hadn’t seen her in a few years, then we ran into her at the guitar store last week and invited her over. You’ll probably really like her, Seth.
Seth: Oh yeah?
Cassie: Yeah. She’s—
Enter Jen. She is chubby and short, yet wholesomely attractive. She is dressed ridiculously—a tall, multi-colored, plush hat, bright green pants, a Confederate Army uniform shirt, and a pink, feathery scarf which she never removes, and shin-length brown Doc Martin boots. Costume Designer should add little or nothing to this outfit. Jen is loud and animated. Her body movements are fluid yet exaggerated. Jen acts as though she knows she is in a play.
Jen: I am so totally here! Bring on 2002! Who wants to get drunk? Who wants to get high? Who wants to run screaming outside just to show the world we’re here, just to show them they can’t stop us, just to take that proverbial road not taken, to shake up the Misters and Ma’ams and goody-two-shoes and the Elvis lovers and the floor boards of that great stoic brainiac in the sky? Who wants to fuck my boots and shit in my hair?
Willy: I really don’t know.
Curtain
Act II
Two hours later.
The stage is now set to resemble a front porch. We see a white front door (with screen door), a white overhanging awning, two white plastic chairs and an ashtray on a milk crate. Lighting should be even lower now, as we are out-of-doors at night. We should feel intimate with a small set centered on the stage. All four characters are present. Willie and Cassie occupy the chairs, Seth and Jen are standing, although they are both frequently moving; their movements are short of pacing but more than fidgeting. Everyone has a drink in their hands. All four are smokers and occasionally light up. (Good luck finding a playhouse that allows this nowadays. However, it is necessary. ‘Miming’ the smoking will not do.)
Cassie: But then where can feminism go from there? I mean, is that it’s logical conclusion?
Jen: Who knows? Dworkin wouldn’t have it any other way, but of course, she’s dead now.
Cassie: All the best ones die.
Seth: Yes, and the worst ones, too.
Jen: I just can’t get over the fact that your walls are white. Off-white, no less! I mean, c’mon, everyone’s walls are off-white! I really pegged you two (addressing Cassie and Willie) as less conformist than that. I thought I’d come over and find pink and camouflage and Sistine Chapel type stuff painted on your walls.
Willie: They’re just walls.
Jen: Nothing is just a wall! A wall is a barrier or an enclosure, a comfort or a menace, a home or a prison. You can’t just go through your life looking at what the last person who lived here thought was acceptable, was easy-on-the-eyes, was relaxing or comforting or homogenous or sane! That’s like living someone else’s life—or someone else’s version of life, or what passed for life for some forty-year-old single mother with two kids who liked to watch Regis and Kathy Lee after she got the little squirts onto the school bus. Did you keep her couch, too? How about her shower curtain? Willy, do you picture her face when you’re balls-deep in Cassie? Of course not! You’re not living her life, you’re living yours, so why do you want her walls?
Seth (to Jen): I’m in love with you. (Nobody seems to hear him say this.)
Willie (to Jen): So what should we do about our carpet? Rip that out, spend thousands of dollars just on principle? Besides, we rent this place, we can’t do whatever we like.
Cassie: And I quite like our carpet, anyway.
Jen: Oh of course there are practical concerns here. You have to live out loud, as far as you’re able. I understand that. But you’ve got to do what you can. You’ve got to try to be heard.
Willie (to Jen): Did you just use the phrase ‘live out loud’? Because you can’t be Thoreau one minute, and Oprah the next. If you’re going to be so on-message, you’ve got to choose your words carefully or you’ll dilute yourself.
Jen: Thoreau? I’ve never been Thoreau. Seth, was I being Thoreau?
Seth: I’m in love with you.
Jen: See? Seth thinks it’s more of a Kafka thing.
The lights all go down except for a spotlight on Seth. The other three characters are now ‘miming’ having a conversation. We see them, in the dark, talking and gesturing, but we cannot hear them. Seth watches them for a full ten seconds, with visible beaming affection. Then he turns from them and walks to the lip of the stage. He now addresses the audience.
Seth: Well, hello there. I suppose this wasn’t much of a play, was it? There’s not much of a plot. It’s just some people talking for a few minutes. We didn’t really follow those pesky “guidelines” (here Seth does ‘air quotes’) that people have set up for plays to follow. Well—Act One is a rather nice, tidy Act One, but then it’s just like we got sick of pretense and just talked about our theme, like the playwright just wanted to get it over with so he or she could go take a long shower. And I hope that they did. But, what was our theme? Was it about walls, or houses? Or was it love? Or roommates? Or the change that comes with a new year, a new house, or a new love interest? Well, I know, for me, I’ve gotta ask how much difference there is between Love, and a House, and Change, because maybe we’re dealing with just one theme, no? I’m not suggesting there is no difference between a house and love—I’m just saying maybe it’s something we could think about. Maybe it’s something we could put in our meat grinder and see if sausage comes out the other end. Ah, I have no idea what I’m talking about anymore. And I haven’t the energy to summon up a compelling and dramatic end to all this. Thanks for being here and watching a caricature of a memory. Now go home and paint your walls. Or don’t. That’s a choice that should always be up to you.
CURTAIN
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