Win or Luge

28 Plays Later
Challenge #8
Let’s be all sporty.

Find your inspiration from a sportical event, or from the culture of sportiality or from observing sportition.
Don’t sport with people’s feelings though, but do feel free to sport at sportspeople who sport their sports-gear.

 

Win or Luge

 

WIN OR LUGE

 

Excerpt:

ANNOUNCER (V/O): Now making his second run on this, the first day of the luge event here at the Olympic Sliding Center is Alejandro ‘Sasha’ Nowatovski. His time on his first run was an extremely competitive 0.81.09 seconds, but as you know, in single-slide luge, each competitor takes four runs and we total the times of all four.

There is a single beep and then SASHA primes his run. Pushing back and forward.

There are three beeps and he pushes off.

The lights begin to dim as soon as he’s offstage. There’s the sound of a crash, and a scream, and then a crowd screaming.

ANNOUNCER (V/O) (alarmed):  Nowatovski has lost control of his sled. He’s jumped the track. Medics are on scene… We’re returning you to studio…

Blackout

 

To read the entire play, follow the link below:

2018-08 Win or Luge

Scenes from a Marriage

28 Plays Later – Challenge #7

OK, so we focus way too much and worry about writing good stuff… how about writing some shite?
Like, proper total crap. (not literally! You know who you are!)
Not as easy as it sounds.
Just have no filters.
Let yourselves go

I didn’t like the “write shite” part of this challenge, but I really responded to the “let yourself go” part. Every year, I do 100 Days of Notecards, where I write a scene or sentence or snippet of dialogue on a 3×5 post-it and stick it on my fridge. To create this play, I pulled a bunch of those notecards (8 I think?) off the fridge and tried to put them in some semblance of order, but without any real connection.

 

Copyright: <a href='https://www.123rf.com/profile_bialasiewicz'>bialasiewicz / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Scenes from a Marriage

 

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

TIME:  24 years ago

PLACE:  MOM’s kitchen.

LIGHTS UP on WOMAN and MOM at the dining room table. They’re each drinking coffee, and sharing a single slice of cheesecake.

MOM (concerned): You’re moving in with him?

WOMAN (confident): Yes.

MOM: You’ve only known him for five minutes. You know nothing about him.

WOMAN: Actually, it’s been six months.

MOM: Still…

WOMAN (ticking things off on her fingers): I know he likes strawberry-rhubarb pie and singing when he mows the lawn, and wearing socks during sex.

MOM gives WOMAN a gushy-mom look.

BLACKOUT

To read the entire play, click here:

2018-07 – Scenes From a Marriage

An Exercise in Futility

28 Plays Later – Challenge # 6
#stillnotequal

Today (February 5th) is in celebration of the 100th year anniversary of Women first being given the vote in the UK. However, we’re also going to acknowledge that women didn’t actually get equal voting rights to men until 1928, so today’s prompt is: ‘Still Not Equal.’

And to reflect modern times, I’d love you to write it in the style of a farce, if you like (or whatever you conceive to be farce in these days)!

Notes: This isn’t a farce. It’s just a bit of frustration that’s probably a shitty first draft of something else. I wasn’t really feeling this prompt. I’m sharing it anyway, because I’m enjoying documenting the process, including the parts of it that didn’t work, because they’re honing my writing voice.

Copyright: <a href='https://www.123rf.com/profile_rh2010'>rh2010 / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

An Exercise in Futility

 

Excerpt:

MARCI (pointing to a calendar tacked to the side of the cubical): Oh, that’s not extreme. We can still do a normal renewal within a year. If it was really extreme, we’d have to start from scratch. (Types into a computer). So, what I need from you is the renewal application, your current ID card – it is just ID? – and your social security card.

KAREN: Well, I did the application online (hands it over), and of course I have my old ID (hands that over, too) but I managed to lose my social security card somewhere inside my house, but your website said I could bring my W-2, so I did that, and…

MARCI: That’s fine. We just need to verify your social security number. (She spends several seconds typing into her computer.) You don’t drive?

KAREN: No, like I said, it’s just ID. I have… I have issues with depth perception, and tracking moving obj –

MARCI (cutting her off): Oh, that’s fine, I’m just confirming. You don’t have to do an eye-test since this is just ID.

KAREN: Well, yes, I knew that.

Click the link below to read the entire play.

2018-06 – An Exercise in Futility

All About the Onions

28 Plays Later – Challenge #5

Use the following first line:

Take off the girdle, Gertl, and tell me everything about Onun’s onions,

or else little Dicklberg here will get it with this!

 

Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash

All About the Onions

Excerpt:

GERTL

(snarky)

Aww, Shanle, I didn’t know you cared.

SHANLE joins GERTL on her side of the hull, and uses his wrench to remove a couple of lug nuts – basically, they take something that looks like a wheel out of the hatch in the side of their ship. Colored wires snake from it’s reverse side.

SHANLE

I think I see the problem. (beat) No. I’m wrong. All I see is mass of horpifed wiring.

GERTL

(explaining patiently)

The onions became disconnected from the paving stone drive at the fourth intersection, and when contact was lost the latent energy caused a spark. If we restore the contact and secure the connection between the paving stone and the onions and then ground it with the nerf ball, we should be good to go.

SHANLE

(impressed)

How… how did you know all that? I thought Onun was the only one who truly understood how the onions functioned.

Click the link below to read the entire play.

2018-05 – All About the Onions

Legacy

28 Plays Later – Challenge #4

Adapt an existing work (poem, song, story, etc.) for the stage

 

 

Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on UnsplashInspiration:

Sonnet #2, William Shakespeare

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

Excerpt:

BETTY

You should set a date and marry your doctor. You’ve got a pretty enough face now, and shiny young person’s hair, but it won’t last. Forty, fifty years from now you’ll be gray and wrinkled like me, and you won’t fill out that sweater so nicely.

I mean, look and me… I got no heinie and my tchotchkes hang almost to my navel. Trust me, a pretty face can’t last forever, and your doctor will give you lots of pretty babies.

ANNA

Well, we’re really not planning on children any time soon. My career is just taking off – I’m an architect – and I don’t want to be like my own mother, constantly having to balance work and home. I want to make my mark first, and then we’ll have a family.

BETTY

An architect? So, what when you’re old and saggy you’ll have some office building that you can point to and call yours? Mark me, young woman, you’ll look in the mirror some day and all you’ll see is your own eyes staring back at you, mocking your dead skin and fading hair. Children… children are the only real legacy there is.

To read the entire piece, click the link below.

2018-04 – Legacy

 

In Dreams

28 Plays Later – Challenge  #3

Tap into your dreams… and put them on stage. I expect the unexpected. Or do I? I want to see things that can not make sense. I want hallucinatory experiences. I want a disruption of conventional notions of form.

Oh, and make the production huge. Try to make the budget sky rocket (maybe literally) – spend as much money as you can – but make the whole experience feel like a dream.

Copyright: <a href='https://www.123rf.com/profile_choreograph'>choreograph / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

IN DREAMS

 

Excerpt:

Welcome to my nightmare. Or yours. Maybe both. It doesn’t really matter. So, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted…

(turns and glares toward the bed)

… nightmares are stimulated by a variety of things. Sometimes they’re caused by things that you see on television or in films – violent crimes in police procedures, or monsters like Dracula or Freddy Krueger.

Sometimes, nightmares are a representation of our fears and phobias, even the silly ones.

(looks down at the table, appears to see something crawling on it, mushes it with her thumb and then wipes her thumb on a napkin.

She shudders visibly.)

Ants. Horrible little creatures. And they’re everywhere.

Click the title below to read the entire piece.

2018-03 – In Dreams

 

Neighborhood Watch

28 Plays Later – 2018

Challenge #2:

Go outside and have a look around you. Notice things. People. Animals. Buildings. Let something that you see outside be the starting point of the play…. And as yesterday’s challenge was set in your hometown, today take it as far away as possible. Maybe a different country – or maybe a different planet – or maybe a different universe … If you add yourself as a character in the play – you will get bonus points! 

Copyright: <a href='https://www.123rf.com/profile_bowie15'>bowie15 / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Excerpt:

What? Sorry, there is this RUDE squirrel keeps landing in my bird feeder.) Where was I? Right! So, I called the doctor, and his girl said he could see me a week from Friday, and I said, ‘Listen Missy, I am all covered with these big old RED spots, and ain’t no way I’m gonna wait til the end of next week to see what’s what.

So, finally, she said she’d try to squeeze me in and…

 

Click the link to read the entire play:

Neighborhood Watch

Like Butterflies

28 Plays Later – 2018

Challenge #1: Write a play about a brave little soldier;

bonus points if it’s set in your home town.

 

Mount Mitchill, Atlantic Highlands, NJ

 

LIKE BUTTERFLIES

 

Scene: Mount Mitchill Memorial Park, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 2031

Lights up on two people – DAVID and SARAH – sitting on a curved stone bench, but SARAH is looking away. Upstage of them, center, is a representation of the 9/11 Memoria – an eagle holding a bent and blackened girder from the World Trade Center. Behind that is a rail fence with a couple standing binoculars – the kind you step up to see into. Projected behind everything is a view of Sandy Hook Bay. The light should be blue-tinted except for a dock-light (the high metal-hooded flood lights that shine directly down. In the distance, the calls of seabirds are faintly discernable.

David is 35-ish, with a military buzzcut. He’s dressed in a polo-shirt with a NASA patch on the pocket, a hoodie open over it, and khaki pants. SARAH is a bit younger – 30 – , wearing a cardigan over a sundress. She’s visibly pregnant.

DAVID (pleading): Come on, Sar… talk to me. I have to report to the base at dawn, and I don’t want to leave with you angry.

SARAH (still turned away from him): There’s nothing to talk about.

DAVID: You could say goodbye, at least.

SARAH: I thought we were done with goodbyes.

DAVID: It’s not me; it’s the job.

SARAH (turning toward him): That’s what you said when you spent six months on Mars last year. That’s what you said two years before that, when they gave you a similar post on the Space Station, and that’s what you said, when you packed us up and moved us to the moon for a year.

DAVID (interrupting): I thought you liked living on the moon. You seemed happy at Luna Colony. You certainly seemed to enjoy the swimming pool.

SARAH: Okay, yes, there was something lovely about swimming in zero-gee under the transparent dome, but it’s not the same as breathing real air or swimming in a real ocean. It’s definitely not a place to be when you’re starting a family.

DAVID: It’s one mission, Sar, and then I’m telling them I only want ground assignments.

SARAH: Mars was technically a ground assignment.

DAVID: Ground assignments on Earth, Sarah.

SARAH: Earth only?

DAVID: Earth only. I promise.

SARAH (relenting, fierce, but flirty): I’m gonna hold you to that, Soldier.

DAVID (amused): Soldier? Really?  Darlin’ I’m a sailor who navigates a sea of stars.

SARAH: Yes, well. Soldier sounds better. (She takes a beat. When she speaks again, she gestures to the memorial) Do you think they’d be proud of us? My dad? Your uncle?

DAVID (also gazing at the memorial, reaching out to trace one of the names etched thereon): I think so. I know they’d be waiting to greet our little bundle of joy. Hard to believe it’s been thirty years since then.

SARAH (arms wrapped around her pregnant belly): It feels like yesterday, sometimes. I mean, I was only two, but I remember Daddy tossing me in the air, and kissing me before he left for work, and then the next thing I remember was Mom crying and holding me so tight.

DAVID (putting his arm around her): I remember my father being in tears. I don’t think I’d ever seen him cry before. (softer) He lost his twin that day. I don’t think I ever realized how deep that pain went.

SARAH: No. You couldn’t.

(The two fall silent, a quiet remembrance taking hold. Suddenly SARAH jumps.)

SARAH (surprised): Hey!

DAVD (worried): What is it? What’s wrong?

SARAH (smiling, her voice full of wonder): He kicked.

DAVID: He…?

SARAH: Or she. The baby. Our baby kicked. (She pulls his hand to her belly). Here. Feel.

DAVID (concentrating and then delighted) Aw, wow! That’s – that’s awesome! (Addressing the belly) Hey there, little solider. I’m your dad, and I love you. And I promise not to be away too long.

SARAH (amused, pointed):  Little soldier? Not sailor?

DAVID (sheepish): Well, soldier just sounds better. (Beat) What’s it feel like?

SARAH: The baby? You felt it.

DAVID: No. I mean, yes, but… no. I mean… what does it feel like from inside?

SARAH (after a few seconds thought): Do you remember how you described launching into space the first time? Like butterflies…

DAVID (with her): … fluttering in your stomach. (Continuing alone) And then a jolt. And then more butterflies.

SARAH: It feels like that. But… more.  (Beat) It feels like that when you leave, too, but the butterflies are in my heart. I worry from the moment you launch to the moment you land. I grew up without a father, David, because of senseless, stupid violence. I don’t want our little butterfly to do the same.

DAVID (reassuringly): She won’t. He won’t. It’s one mission, Sar, I promise. A quick jaunt to the outer rings and back. (Affectionate, but teasing) Come on, be my brave little soldier, and I’ll be home before you know it.

SARAH (miffed): I’m not your little soldier.

DAVID: Maybe not, but you’re carrying our little soldier. So, be brave for his or her sake, because if you are, I will be, too.

SARAH (dubious): You get scared, when you’re up there?

DAVID: Of course, I do. Not the kind of fear that stops me, but the low-grade worry in the back of my head: What if she leaves me? What if something happens to her or the baby, and I can’t get home in time? What if something happens to me, and she never knows what really happened?

SARAH: I didn’t think… you always seem so confident.

DAVID (joking): Well, yeah. Can’t have you thinking I’m a wuss.

(SARAH shivers, and DAVID takes off his hoodie and wraps it around her shoulders. Then he stands.)

DAVID: Come on, let’s go home. I have it on good authority that butterflies are much calmer when they’re warm and cozy.

(He pulls SARAH to her feet and she loops her arm through his. )

SARAH: Take the scenic route. I want to watch the stars.

They walk off, stage left, arm in arm.

The lights fade to black.