All Those Plays About Yankee City Folk Who Drop 51 F-Bombs in 2 Hours

For an “artsy” guy who’s day-job is direct practice mental health, I have an odd affinity for spreadsheets:

An unscientific chronological sampling of the 37 plays I have analyzed for this blog: 

2015, 2014 (4), 2012, 2010 (2), 2009 (3), 2008, 2007 (2), 2003 (3), 2002, 2001 (2), 2000 (2), 1999, 1998, 1997, 1993 (2), 1992, 1988, 1983, 1980, 1953, 1949, 1944, 1924

Mean: 1996

Mode: 2014

Median: 2003

20th century: 13

21st century: 24

For my last analysis for production, I  compiled a spreadsheet to measure the use of potentially offensive language in Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo.  Basically, for the cause of science, I limited my data to those words listed in George Carlin’s 1972 monologue “Filthy Words.”  “Those are the ones that will curve your spine, grow hair on your hands and maybe, even bring us, God help us, peace without honor, and a bourbon (source).”

The script contained 82 instances of “coarse language:” 

51 (62%) varieties of “fuck.”

19 (26%) varieties of “shit.”

5 (6%) varieties of “dick.”

3 (4%) varieties of “ass.”

My analyses regularly include “other possibly controversial subject matter,” including sex, violence and substance use.  It continues to amaze me however what is acceptable in local theatres even when “fuck” is (usually) not. Homosexuality is OK, as long as it’s funny. Saying “Jesus Christ” or “God damn it” doesn’t raise an eyebrow. Shooting a gun is fine, as long as it appears in the playbill and there’s an announcement sandwiched between flashing lights and fog and the availability of drinks and dessert at intermission. Yet it can still be reasonably said that I read 20 year-old plays that continue to be a hard sell in my market.

Times may have changed since I first started this blog. Locally, we’ve produced Rent and I directed Next to Normal with its script intact in April 2019. Then, the pandemic hit, and hopes for a progressive season which included August: Osage County turned into a jukebox musical and a farce by the “Swim Club Play Factory.” Rabbit Hole (original 2007) with its language and adult themes made the cut for Fall 2021, but “safe” and “surefire” are better buzz words moving forward. Not only might audiences be reluctant to enter our theatres due to steady (rising?) COVID rates, actors and technicians are also only slowly filtering back. Between COVID-related cast changes and lacking technical help, I was forced to cancel the witty but innocently written comedy, Leaving Iowa (original 2004). It is understandable that the 2023 season at my main performance venue (a challenging lineup) draws from plays first produced (in chronological order) in 1939, 1963, 1982, and 1987. 

Another continuing hurdle for producing new works here is multiculturalism. The settings of many modern plays, primarily urban, make them intrinsically multi-ethnic. We here in Pleasantville are somewhat diverse in the census data, but POC may have been only as high as 2% of those cast in the past 5 years. Marginally represented playwrights and peoples should be promoted, we just don’t have them well-represented in our theatre community. A dear friend aspires to one-day play Ali in Come From Away. His ancestry is Russian Jewish and he is fair-skinned. Having him play such a role replete with dialect, even if performed with skill, dignity and respect, may be viewed as culturally insensitive. We have NO South Asian or North African males in our casting pool. 

Playwrights who want to get produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, and Phoenix, write about those populations and set plays in those cities. They routinely deal with city people with city problems, who speak like city dwellers. I’m not saying we don’t fucking curse, but plays with urban settings often seem dishonest out here where livestock may outnumber the human population and more land is zoned agricultural than residential. 

I don’t have any brilliant answers yet. Maybe our theatre is destined to be a distant reflection of the urban landscape from the early to mid 20th century or watching passable farces and waiting for Oklahoma! to come back again. But, if you’re interested in moving your setting away from the NorthEast, you might try some of the titles below. Unfortunately, all but 3 of them were first produced before dawn of the 21st century:

AL: Big Fish

GA: The Foreigner

IL: These Shining Lives

IA: The Bridges of Madison County

KS: Picnic

LA: Steel Magnolias

ME: Almost, Maine

MI: Escanaba in da Moonlight

MN: Girl from the North Country

MS: Crimes of the Heart

OH: She Kills Monsters

WY: The Laramie Project

Good Luck. Now back to spreadsheets. 

A privileged white “intellectual” walks into a bar…

In April 2018, I wrote Color-Blind? as my first attempt at discussing the “race issue” in relation to the theatre in my resident demographic. In the current climate (June 26, 2020), I enter into the subject area not sure where I am headed. So, please forgive me as I ramble. By vocation, I want to advocate. As an artist,  I desire to reach new audiences with integrity while acknowledging that our theatres are a victim of, a servant to, and an artistic advisor for its patrons.

In the following paragraph I simply state statistics. I’m not applying for sainthood or praying a mea culpa:

I have added ONE actor of color in a color-blind casting (a sailor in Mister Roberts). He was a collaborator on another project who has since moved on (and a leading man type dammit). I strongly encouraged POC to audition for my production of Next to Normal in our media push. I personally invited 2 of the 3 people of African descent who were regular performers at our theatre to audition. At auditions, I had 2 non-white actors participate. Neither had the vocal skill for the roles that met their age-respective/ appropriate character (Diana/Henry).  One actor did both join my ensemble and build my light cues (all while suffering an unexpected life-threatening condition, no less).

In the short list of POC in our area, there are many Latinx families that have been here for 100 years and many of whom are first generation Mexican mestizo. A smattering of the latter regularly perform at our theatres, but in much lower numbers than the demographic percentage. The 3 black actors who are regular participants are:

1. a 19 year old ethnic Nigerian woman raised in US,
2. a biracial man in his early 20s,  and
3. a mid-forties black woman in a biracial marriage who moved here from Louisiana via DC.

I am unaware if  these actors are active members of the local Black community, however, my area is far more diverse than my audition pool. It is my estimation that there is far more talent than that to which I have been introduced. My question:

How do I encourage more POC to join us… OR start something of their own so that we might support them with our patronage, and maybe even someday and join THEM? 

Nobody needs my help. If POC in my community aren’t interested in theatre (or the work which our area theatres have produced), that is our fault for not appearing or being welcoming, or perhaps not being attractive or interesting. Unfortunately, I can’t dream of getting Lynn Nottage’s Ruined or Sweat produced in our theatres unless I can guarantee 1) a cast and 2) an audience.

Black Playwrights You Should Know:  I’ll be honest, I read about 6-10 plays per year (most are from playwrights who identify as female) and I haven’t heard of any of the listed playwrights or titles (maybe Moonlight?).

Ten Major African American Playwrights: I’ve done a great deal of reading and research on Langston Hughes, know who Lorainne Hansberry, George Wolfe, and Ntozake Shange are and what they wrote, and have seen August Wilson’s Fences and Two Trains Running in their NYC premieres. Vinette Carroll was a visiting professor at my university (the latter 3 name-drops say more about my privilege than my scholarship). Zora Neale Hurston was one of the few famous residents of my home town. I have purposefully left these names without links to force you to do the research.  Again, I write this not to garner respect or credibility but so that you might appreciate my ignorance.

I doubt I’ll get more than some “likes” from my white friends on this post so, here’s a helpful but pessimistic take on what we pale-faced empaths might do:

Things white people can do to advocate for racial equality (without pretending they’re black)

Some more ideas: “What can I do?”

And here’s a great reading list of books (not plays):

An Antiracist Reading List

Soldier’s Wife by Rose Franken: an analysis for production

Part of the series: “By Nancy”

TPT Commentary: As a social worker trained in counseling and reintegrating returning veterans and their families, I found one scene especially telling and timeless despite its age: The wife, living alone and raising an infant, has learned to rewire a lamp. Her husband (and his wife) are almost disappointed that it actually works. Soldier’s Wife challenges audiences with an all-to-often retold and enacted parable of a soldier’s return to home only to find that the world moved on without him, and the wife who must decide to relinquish or share her new-found agency (and in this case, celebrity). Who should be celebrated, the humble soldier who enlisted, leaving a white collar well -paying job, to witness atrocities being repaid by an injury which prompts his discharge, or the overnight success and media darling who never asked for the attention?   Soldier’s Wife by Rose Franken is a pleasant and straightforward play that perhaps moves too quickly in its conceits, but with delightfully modern dialogue and round characters. The play ends with a stereotypical acceptance of the status quo and a return to traditional gender roles but, this time, by choice.

Recommendation: Strong: All theatres, most especially those outside larger cities and in more conservative markets. This writer is aware that this play breaks two of his own guidelines: the play is 80 years old and is set in Manhattan. My recommendation supersedes these guidelines because the themes are too universal and the medium too inviting and effective to ignore.  

Summary: An officer returns from the war to find his wife has become a self reliant, successful writer, turning their world topsy turvy. 

Themes: self-reliance, women’s rights/place in society/gender expectations, horror of war, reunification, literary/media ethics 

Cast: 3f, 2m

Running Time: 2 hours and 20 minutes, includes 2 intermissions, 3 acts

Royalties (professional): Minimum Fee: $90 per performance 

Sets: One set,pre-war NYC apartment  living room with implied exits to the kitchen common hall, and at least one bedroom, and a window

Costumes: Approximately 15: Period 1944: Women: simply dresses, high fashion business dresses, overcoats, hats. Men: Suits: overcoats, hats 

Props: Acquirable: fresh flowers in a variety of “freshness,” “antique/used” furniture for 1944, period baby items (pram, diapers), radiator, boxed long-stem roses (yellow), period cigarettes (possibly cases)

Provenance:   

Playwright: Rose Dorothy Lewin Franken was a celebrated Broadway playwright and director, a Hollywood screenwriter and a popular novelist whose fiction touched a sympathetic chord in American women. Although influenced by the domestic dramas of Sidney Howard, she was essentially a self-taught playwright who learned dramatic construction from textbooks. Another Language, her third play, opened at the Booth Theatre, New York, on April 25, 1932, and ran for 453 performances. After her husband’s death from tuberculosis in 1932, the playwright relocated to Hollywood and began the second phase of her writing career as a sought-after screenwriter. While still in Hollywood, Franken began to publish the Claudia short stories. After an absence of nine years from the theater, Franken returned with Claudia, a dramatization of her fiction. Dissatisfied with the casting choices, Franken took over the direction. It opened in London at St. Martin’s Theatre, on September 17, 1942, and returned to the St. James Theatre, New York, on May 24, 1942. The film (1943) starred McGuire and Robert Young, who were paired again in Claudia and David, a 1946 movie sequel based upon another Franken novel.Although an assimilated Jew, Franken was sensitive toward discrimination.Outrageous Fortune, Franken’s most daring play, takes a hard look at antisemitism and homosexuality. Despite their considerable wealth and talent, many of the characters are hiding, living in conformity to the dominant culture. Rapid literary construction, a denial of any revisions—which is not borne out by her manuscripts— and an emphasis on her feather-brained helplessness and domesticity became characteristics of Franken’s public persona.

Play:  Opening in October of 1944, with Martha Scott and Myron McCormick in the lead roles, with favorable notices and running a respectable 253 performances at the John Golden Theatre, Soldier’s Wife closed less than a week after V-E Day, and was included in that season’s Burns Mantle Best Plays annual.

Purchase: $9.95 

Reviews:  

Modern: New York, 2006

CurtainUp, TimeOut(harsh), Village Voice, Variety(not impressed), Time (must subscribe),  NYTimes, Broadway World

Drinking: Scotch neat, up to 3 times

Smoking: none, but cigarettes are shared

Sex: implied relations between wife and husband, playful spanking (inappropriate by modern standards)

Language: bitch, bitches (up to 3 times)

Violence: playful spanking (inappropriate by modern standards)

Other possibly controversial subject matter: Implied horror of war and its lasting effects on the psyche of those affected by it; Divorce and remarriage 

Rating: PG, for brief language

Format inspired by the sadly suspended operations of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre (then enhanced by TPT)   

cover photo: collage of Mint Theater Company Production Photos,NYC Broadway Playbill John Golden Theatre January 1945

The Beard of Avon by Amy Freed, an analysis for production

Part of the series, “…by Nancy”

TPT Commentary: This work succeeds in demonstrating an artist at the height of a playwright’s skills. The Beard of Avon tells a story, presents several messages, and challenge actors, audiences and creative teams. This all occurs while everyone has fun, forgetting that we might have suffered a little preaching along the way. Furthermore, Ms. Freed succeeds in giving her audiences a work that that is by “A” playwright, regardless of gender. I am sure that I will read several more such works as I continue my hopefully endless journey into playwrights who happen to be women. This work, however, succeeds admirably in presenting that with the restriction from the theatre and continuing to the hopefully expanding yet still reduced prominence of women we have been deprived of an important voice. That voice is unique to the chief cook, bottle washer, child-rearer, van driver, motivation coach, craftsperson, executive and artist that is the modern woman. Ms. Freed succeeds in giving us both truly complicated male characters that are central to the work and period, and thankfully two women, Queen Elizabeth and Anne Hathaway who represent the “glass ceiling” from opposing perspectives. Anne is both brilliant, passionate, beautiful, and talented…and trapped and illiterate. Elizabeth literally rules the world …but can’t get a play staged under her own name. If you’ve got the money, the creative team and cast, and an audience and board of directors who accept actors saying shit and prick several times in 2 hours, we have a winner. 

Recommendation: Strong, but only for College and Professional productions: Speedy and effortless scene changes suggesting multiple locations, well-choreographed physical comedy, constant use of verse and the necessary mastery of same, and a dozen or more of Elizabethan costumes. 

Summary: A fast-moving bawdy comedy wherein the playwright “William Shakespeare” is made manifest from a patchwork of fortunate accidents, aristocratic wit, restrictive cultural mores, and one man’s innate gift to polish, refine, focus and ornament the “almost perfect” work of a mélange of strange bedfellows.  

Themes: Talent is innate regardless of education or circumstances. Social culture creates restrictions that prohibit expression and self-realization. Theatre is a collaborative art. Which is most important to art, intellectual property, renown, or public access? 

Cast: Minimum: 7/8m, 2f with significant doubling; Maximum 11+ (speaking roles and ensemble); 2 excellent roles for women 

Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes https://www.goodmantheatre.org/season/0203/The-Beard-of-Avon/ 

Royalties (professional): by written request

Sets: Single set capable of morphing quickly and seamlessly into several English Renaissance locations: barn, backstage, simple home, theatre, lavish bed chamber, tavern, etc. 

Costumes: (12-20) Elizabethan Renaissance, from commoners to royalty (Queen, Earl), several built for quick changes, “stage costumes” from the era including a 3 for a man as a beautiful young woman 

Props: Highly Important: period pieces that quickly indicate a change in locale as stated above 

Provenance:  

Playwright: https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/shows/players/amy-freed/ 

Nominated for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, Drama 

Joseph Kesselring Prize 

Charles MacArthur Award 

Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award (several times) 

South Coast Repertory 2009 Steinberg Commission 

Arena Stage, American Voices New Play Institute 

Play: Outstanding New Play, 2002 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle 

Purchase: 

Reviews: 

New York 2003:

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/theater/theater-review-cutting-shakespeare-down-to-size-at-his-own-game.html 

http://variety.com/2001/legit/reviews/thttps://culturevulture.net/theater/the-beard-of-avon-amy-freed/he-beard-of-avon-1200468899/ 

https://www.upi.com/Review-Avon-has-fun-with-Shakespeare/89891074299261/ 

Austin, 2006

San Francisco, 2002

DC, 2005

Chicago, 2002

Seattle, 2001

Drinking: Possible and appropriate in several scenes (artistic discretion) 

Smoking: None noted (artistic discretion) 

Sex: Implication that characters have recently been in and are routinely involved in heterosexual and homosexual coital relations, implication of and comedic representation of extramarital coital relations (artistic discretion), implication of prostitution, bawdy talk (that’s not a sausage it’s my…), short song/limerick with the punchline “I took my liberty and she said nothing,” implied sadomasochism for comic effect, “Do it again. She likes it! (in the middle of a man hitting a woman in fight choreography),” other implications from classic literature and mythology if one might be informed enough to interpret them as intended 

Language: “It’s my prick, thou wilt kiss it,” shithead, “popping whatnots” (breasts),  “shit beat out of you,” frequent use of “prick,” “stupid-ass, shit-heel, retarded tinker,” “the beautiful and effeminate Third Earl of Southampton” (several times), “sodomies and buggeries, and rapes and divers pederastic flings,” “raping, murdering, polygamous father,” more “shit,” “bulges there under your Moorish cloak,” “whorehouse,” “pussy,” asses are everywhere (referring to buttocks and persons),” “hell,” “sluttish fashion,” “slut,” “hot bitch,” “whore,” “whoreson” 

Violence: Comic fight choreography where a man hits a woman several times 

Other possibly controversial subject matter: Possible theater marquees with suggestive titles (artistic discretion)  

Rating: If this were a movie, it would be rated PG. Some subject matter, however may only be appropriate for those 14 years of age and older. 

Format inspired by the sadly suspended operations of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre (then enhanced by TPT)  

Anton in Show Business by “Jane Martin”: An Analysis for Production

T-Anne: The American Theatre’s in a shitload of trouble. That’s why the stage is bare, and it’s a cast of six…Like a lot of plays you’ve seen at the end of the twentieth century, we all have to play a lot of parts to make the whole thing economically viable.

Caveat: I read this beautiful, brilliant, feminist, and very funny play having been passingly familiar with the title, and naively assuming that it was authored by a woman. The gender and identity of “Jane Martin” are part of its mystique. Most speculations point to male authorship, in part or in entirety. http://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/04/theater/mystery-deepens-at-louisville-new-plays-festival.html

I checked out Leading Women: Plays for Actresses II, edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold (ISBN 037572667) hoping for a volume from which I could mine some gold for my series on plays written by women. The tome includes some worthy titles that I love and had already read: Marguiles’ (male) Collected Stories, and Son’s (female) Stop Kiss. Ball’s (male) Five Women Wearing the Same Dress is a dated piece with which I’m very familiar, and of which I’m not enthused. I rejected two of the plays, for dubious producibility in my markets, before finishing them: Corthorn’s (female) Breath, Boom, Jordan’s (female) Smoking Lesson, and McLaughlin’s (female) Tongue of a Bird. The collection also includes one-acts and stand alone monologues which may be wonderful, but aren’t my “thing.”

Anton in Show Business skewers everything that is peculiar and maddening about American Theatre. It does so particularly in regards to being a woman in that milieu, and with such aplomb that one could see its cast of actors and some audience members rampaging other theatres after the curtain falls. Hopefully and perhaps, this battalion might leave nothing but salted fields for anyone short-sighted enough to propose another production of The Marvelous Swim Club of Church Basement Nuns. Unfortunately, some dialogue, no matter how on-point, poignant, perfect and passing may breach the toleration of censors and patrons in smaller, more conservative markets.

The fast-paced comedy follows three actresses from NY auditions (don’t worry they don’t stay long) for Chekov’s Three Sisters to a regional theatre in Texas where artistic hopes and dreams do battle with commercial realities and compromise.  All characters, regardless of gender,  (even the quick-change crew) are played by women. Each scene lampoons (lays bare?) American theatre’s idolatry of Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre, the cult of celebrity, “artistic concepts,”  blind Anglophilia, and seemingly hundreds of other sacred cows and self-loathing preoccupations .

Recommendation: STRONG: with reservations

Pros: The casting will make use of so many of your wonderful actresses which are sadly disproportionate to number of roles you can usually offer them. The latter is another elephant pointed out in the action. The dialogue is hilarious, fast-paced and non-stop. All locations are implied by props on a practically bare stage (cost reduction?).

Challenges:

                   Language/Topics: One actor reveals, briefly, that she was sexually assaulted (“sort of halfway raped by a plumber”).  Another actor reveals her first orgasm (“I came.”) occurred while filming a pornographic movie. Both are sad/funny moments. The common vulgarities (shit, damn, fuck?, etc.) are true and passing, and as offensive as watching a 22-year old stubbing her toe. Women play men, and kiss other women passionately.

                   Props/Costumes: Women as men, an Afrocentric character, an airport waiting area with airline desk, one partially-built period costume, several quick changes

                   Dialects/Accents: Stereotypical African American, English, Polish/Eastern European, Texas/Southern

                   Casting: One actor should be African-American

Cast: At least 7 women, some regional accents, all characters 22-40. As many female stagehands as you can hire. See Challenges above.

Set: Open stage with many specific furniture pieces: airline seats

Royalties (professional): $100 per performance

Costumes: Dozens, including several quick changes, contemporary Costumes / street clothes, see Challenges above

Props: See Challenges above

Running Time: Two hours and 15 minutes, with an intermission http://www.totaltheater.com/?q=node/895

Controversial topics: sexual assault, promiscuity, pornography, infidelity, cosmetic surgery, sexual quid pro quo

Purchase:http://www.samuelfrench.com/p/2932/anton-in-show-business

Suitable for: Regional theatre, college theatre, very adventurous community theatre

Awards

     Play:

• Winner: 2001 American Theatre Critics Steinberg New Play Award

     Playwright:

• Best Foreign Play of the Year Award in Germany from Theatre Heute magazine (Germany)
• Pulitzer Prize nominee; 1994 American Theatre Critics Association Best New Play Award (Keely and Du)
• 1997 American Theatre Critics Association Best New Play Award (Jack and Jill)

Reviews:

2000, Original production, Actors Theatre of Louisville (KY): http://www.totaltheater.com/?q=node/895

Recent production reviews:

2007, Austin, TX: https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2007-04-27/469103/

2013, Tortonto (not favorable): http://slotkinletter.com/2013/08/review-anton-in-show-business

2002, Milwaukee: http://www.totaltheater.com/?q=node/897

2012, Atlanta: http://artsatl.com/review-smart-sharp-%E2%80%9Canton-show-business%E2%80%9D-offers-laughs-season/

2017, Silver Spring, MD: https://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2017/02/25/review-anton-show-business-silver-spring-stage/

Featured photo: Production photo from the 2006 BLKBOX Theater production (San Diego, CA)

Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley: An Analysis for Production

Chick Boyle: So Rebecca, what are you going to tell Mr. Lloyd about shooting Zachery, uh, what are your reasons gonna be?

Rebeca ‘Babe’: That I didn’t like his looks. That I didn’t like his stinkin’ looks! I don’t like yours either Chickie stick. So leave me alone and I mean it. Just leave me alone!

“At the end of 1980, Crimes of the Heart was produced off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club for a limited, sold-out, engagement of thirty-two performances. By the time the play transferred to Broadway in November, 1981, Crimes of the Heart had received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Henley was the first woman to win the Pulitzer for Drama in twenty-three years, and her play was the first ever to win before opening on Broadway. Crimes of the Heart went on to garner the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New American Play, a Guggenheim Award, and a Tony nomination. The tremendously successful Broadway production ran for 535 performances, spawning regional productions in London, Chicago, Washington, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston. The success of the play—and especially the prestige of the Pulitzer award—assured Henley’s place among the elite of the American theatre for years to come. As Henley herself put it, with typically wry humor, “winning the Pulitzer Prize means I’ll never have to work in a dog-food factory again” (Haller 44).” http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/crimes-heart#A

This dark comedy set in the still small town of Hazlehurst, Mississippi (pop. reported in 2016 as 3,883), may well be the archetype by which all plays in this series will earn my recommendation. Crimes of the Heart is well-written, hilarious, character-driven within realistic circumstances, and portrays women as combatants in the war of life, not victims. It happens to have been written by a woman. Especially, for those of you who have read my peculiarities  IT’S NOT SET IN NYC!

It is no surprise that Crimes of the Heart remains a staple in the seasons of many theatres, even though I haven’t ever seen it here in Pleasantville. I checked the production history of our longest running community theatre and despite it being a community theatre’s wet dream (comedy, strong central roles for women, 1 interior set, inexpensive props and costumes), it has never been produced in the 50-year history of the theatre. Perhaps, early on, there were some moral concerns (murder, interracial affair with a teenager, ridiculously failed attempts at suicide)  but most all tawdriness is offstage and the story is done with so much humor, I cannot see how nearly anyone, outside of a Puritan complete with stovepipe hat, would have been, or would ever be offended. This should be produced in every season until the end of time replacing any considered future production of the The Marvelous Swim Club of Church Basement Nuns.

Recommendation: STRONG: YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!

Cast: 4w/2m, regional accents, all characters 19-32, Doc walks with a slight limp. Casting notice: https://www.backstage.com/casting/crimes-of-the-heart-4555/

Royalties (professional): $100 per performance

Running Time: Two hours, with an intermission

Costumes: approximately 13 including conservative practical dresses circa 1974 or earlier. 2 men’s costumes: 1 casual, 2 costumes for an attorney (season: fall Mississippi)

Set: single interior: 1974, kitchen of Gothic home in Hazlehurst, Mississippi with table and 4 chairs, practical sink, period oven range (1950s)

Props: saxophone case, weathered luggage circa mid-1960s, bag of pecans (some practical in shell), nylon stockings in point-of-sale packaging (1974) for each night, practical cake, antique phone, twine

Controversial topics: Suicide, infidelity, sexual relations with a minor, attempted murder, dark humor (coma).

Purchase: http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=1271

Suitable for: community theatre, summer stock, regional theatre

Awards

• 1981 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best American Play
• 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
• 1982 Theatre World Award

Nominations

• 1982 Tony Award for Best Play
• 1982 Tony Award, Best Featured Actress in a Play

Mia Dillon, Mary Beth Hurt

• 1982 Tony Award, Best Direction of a Play (Melvin Bernhardt)
• 1981 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play
• 1981 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actress in a Play (Mary Beth Hurt)
• 1981 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play
• 2002 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Revival

Recent production reviews:

NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/theater/reviews/15crim.html

DC Metro Theatre Arts: http://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2016/02/28/189881/

Backstage: https://www.backstage.com/review/crimes-of-the-heart/

Twin Cities Pioneer Press: http://www.twincities.com/2014/05/11/crimes-of-the-heart-review-guthrie-theater-does-right-by-play/

The Show-Off by George Kelly: an analysis for production

The Show-Off: A Transcript of Life in Three Acts by George Kelly, Copyright 1924.
In recent theater history, we have seen countless single set drawing room comedies. In 1924, however, George Kelly was seen as a pioneer

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard (1983): an analysis for production

Eddie: “She’s just standing there, staring at me, and I’m staring back at her and we can take our eyes off each other. It was like we knew each other from somewhere but we couldn’t place where. But the second we saw each other, that very second, we knew we never stop being in love¹.

Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? The love of Eddie and May, the central characters, does have its share of romance but the words dangerous, doomed, volatile, and visceral may more adequately describe the oscillating storm of their connection. As when the orbits of two planets intersect, attraction yields devastation.

“She’s just standing there, staring at me, and I’m staring back at her and we can take our eyes off each other.”

Fool²:

1:            a person lacking in judgment or prudence

2:            a :  a retainer formerly kept in great households to provide casual entertainment and commonly dressed in motley with cap, bells, and bauble

b :  one who is victimized or made to appear foolish :  a dupe

3:            a :  a harmlessly deranged person or one lacking in common powers of understanding

b :  one with a marked propensity or fondness for something <a dancing fool> <a fool for candy>

4:            a cold dessert of pureed fruit mixed with whipped cream or custard

Whereas I think the fourth definition is HILARIOUS, it seems that Eddie, May, the Old Man and most any of my readers would agree that they, and we, are often if not chronically “fools” for love. We enter into love with a “marked propensity or fondness for something (or someone),” and become a “harmlessly deranged person or one lacking in common powers of understanding.” When things break bad, and we feel as if we are “dupes, victimized or made to appear foolish.” Often despite the humiliation or even danger, to Love we become the motley fool “kept in (its) great household to provide (its) casual entertainment.”

Perhaps this is best left to the theatre professors, but Shepard has a knack for creating a new mythology. As in Tooth of the Crime, Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class, Shepard expands archetypes into extraordinary icons. Just as the sins of the father become an ever-present overlord in our fated struggle, the ghostly Old Man (father to both Eddie and May) literally holds court as his fools “provide casual entertainment.” He serves as a fusion of post-realist and Greek theatrical traditions in the dual role of cautionary chorus and omniscient but ambivalent god. Eddie and May are both familiar and tragic heroes headed for cyclical fates. Martin, May’s naïve first-date gentleman caller, is simply a foil, catalyst, and innocent traveler trapped in the tempest of a natural disaster.

On the surface this play is straightforward with simplistic production requirements:

Cast: 3 men (30s-70s) / 1 women (30s)

Set: “Stark, low-rent motel (room) on the edge of the Mojave Desert”

Costumes: Contemporary, western

Royalties: $100/performance, plus suggested use of 2 Merle Haggard tunes

On further reading, the production becomes even more demanding. Fool for Love requires two strong leads in 30’s that must develop the depth of a 15-20 year complicated relationship. The set includes two doors that are “amplified with microphones and the bass drum head in the frame so that each time after (an actor) slams it, the door blooms loud and long.” It might be replaced by a sound effect, but this could easily violate Shepard’s intention to communicate the power of Eddie and May’s relationship in terms that are literally tangible to the audience, and directly and immediately connected to characters’ behaviors. Attempting to accomplish this play without physically trained actors and an experienced stage combat choreographer is foolish as it would guarantee injuries and unpredictable destruction of properties and set pieces. No organization can afford either.

Censorial concerns: 24 instances of language and phrases considered profane including “fuckin’(1),”; “twat(1),” “pussy (2)”, “goddamn (3),” “shit(5),” and crude references to sexual intercourse (2). Strong domestic violence; no sexual abuse.

Provenance:

Sam Shepard³:

• Renowned as a canonical American author
• Cannes Palme d’Or
• Pulitzer Prize
• OBIEs for “Melodrama Play” (1968), “Cowboys #2” (1968), “The Tooth of the Crime” (1972).
• Received grants from the Rockefeller and the Guggenheim Foundations
• Drama Desk Award and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Play: “A Lie of the Mind” (1986)

Play:

• Adapted into a 1985 motion picture starring Sam Shepard, Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, and Randy Quaid⁴
• Original production starred Ed Harris and Kathy Baker¹
• New York, London
• Williamstown Theater Festival in Williamstown, MA on July 24, 2014⁵

Recommendation: STRONG with caveats. Sam Shepard is quite possibly our greatest living American playwright. The setting is rural (not NYC!). The theme of destructive and unavoidable power of attraction is timeless. The central acting parts are epic. You may be lucky enough to have a certified combat choreographer in your ensemble, the budget to hire one, or even have the fortune to have her/him direct or star in your production.

http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=1214

Available for lending from Princeton Public Library, Princeton, IL

References:

1. Fool for Love and The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1983.
2. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fool (8/14/2015 3:39 PM)
3. http://www.sam-shepard.com/aboutsam.html (8/14/2015 4:55 PM)
4. http://www.sam-shepard.com/writer.html
5. http://www.sam-shepard.com/writer.html