30 PLAYS IN 30 DAYS: Bonus Play "My Left Breast" by Susan Miller

 

Here is another bonus play for my "30 Plays in 30 Days" September reading challenge. My Left Breast by Susan Miller is a one-woman show that I found in a collection I have of The Best American Short Plays 1993-1994. The play originally premiered at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in the 1994 Humana Festival where Miller performed the piece herself. 

A multi-layered monologue, My Left Breast tells the story of a "one-breasted, menopausal, Jewish bisexual lesbian Mom", from a diagnoses of breast cancer through a mastectomy, from raising her son, to a breakup of a long-term relationship, and a diagnoses of osteoporosis... and through it all, Miller tells the story in a very human way, with plenty of humor, insight and poignancy.  I found the descriptions in the aftermath of her breakup relatable, and one can feel the no-holds barred honesty as she approaches each subject with a kind of grace in her writing.

Susan Miller received an Obie and shared the 1994/1995 Blackburn Prize for the play. It is published by Playscripts, Inc., a very fine publishing house (they carry two of my plays), so if you are interested in reading the play or licensing it for performance, you can visit their website by CLICKING HERE.

If you know this play, have read it, seen it, or performed it, let me know your thoughts by commenting on this post. If you would like to learn more about my plays, you can do so by CLICKING HERE.

30 PLAYS IN 30 DAYS: Play #21 "One Flea Spare" by Naomi Wallace

 

I have decided for the month of September to read 30 plays in 30 days. It is my belief that, if possible, a play should be read in one sitting to get a better inherent sense of the dramatic arc. Each day, I will write a short post here about the play of the day.

Play #21

One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace

One Flea Spare  is set in a plague ravaged London in 1665, which is perhaps why it is perfect reading for today, for right now, this minute. I have read that Naomi Wallace was inspired by Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year and the acquittal of the four officers who beat Rodney King. According to Laura Michiel's essay Times of Contagion: The Social(ist) Politics of Plague in Naomi Wallace's "One Flea Spare", to Wallace, "these events became linked, because spatial barriers broke down, obliging the rich and poor to share a common space." And indeed, this play is very much about class, particularly in the time of a mass illness. Lower-class guard Kabe at one paint preaches, "you will see who it is that dies, their mouths open in want, the maggots moving inside their tongues making their tongues wag as though they were about to speak. But they will never speak again in this world. The hungry. The dirty. The abandoned. That's who dies. Not the fancy and the wealthy..."

One need only look today to see things have not changed a great deal in this regard. The effects of the current pandemic (as well as upcoming disasters such as climate change) do effect the poor by a very noticeable margin. And while this project isn't necessarily about making any kind of political statement, I think it is worth mentioning how art, even historical art, can be a powerful reflection of our present-day lives. 

The story centers on a wealthy couple who are about to flee London to try to outrun the plague, but are forced to stay and quarantine (literally forced--- boarded inside and guarded) when a sailor, Bunce, stumbles into their house thinking it is empty. A young girl of 12, Morse, has also become a stowaway in the house without them realizing. Because these uninvited guests were spotted by guards getting into the home, the wealthy couple, the Snelgraves, cannot leave. The four are stuck together. 

And Wallace is very good at showing how this quarantine-by-force breaks down the usual societal norms as time passes. And as one may notice in the quote above, Wallace does not shy away from the sad and the gruesome details of death, whether describing the pits where the dead are thrown, or those waiting to die and the "tokens" on their skin, black boils of pain. 

The meat of the play is how the characters interact, and Mr. Snelgrave, the master of the house, immediately keeps his "rightful" place and makes Bunce and Morse his servants. But structure cannot last forever. Not in quarantine. There is emotional and physical manipulation, violence, and odd desire. 

Which is not to say that the play is without humor and beauty. Naomi Wallace is also a poet, and her dialogue is lyrical and effortlessly descriptive. My favorite character is Morse, a challenging role no question, for any young actress. She was a servant girl who watched her mother get the "tokens" of the plague, and saw her master throw her mother in the cellar behind a locked door, and gave her no food or water. From then, she was on her own, until locking down as part of this very strange, intense group.

The title One Flea Spare comes from a poem, The Flea, by John Donne, and Wallace uses this and the Brecht quote "Corruption is our only hope" as epigraphs in the printed version of the play. The play originally premiered in London in October of 1995, then was part of the Humana Festival in 1996. It  opened in New York at the Public Theater in 1997, and won an Obie award for best play. The cast included Dianne Wiest  and a young Mischa Barton. The play also won a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the 1996 Joseph Kesserling Prize, and the 1996 Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award.

This is my first introduction to the works of Naomi Wallace, and I anxiously look forward to learning more about her work. She is a MacArthur Fellow who has written many plays and several screenplays. I hope to learn more about her work soon. In the meantime, I highly recommend this play, though it may not be for the squeamish. 

30 PLAYS IN 30 DAYS: Play #17 "Jack and Jill: A Romance" by Jane Martin

 

I have decided for the month of September to read 30 plays in 30 days. It is my belief that, if possible, a play should be read in one sitting to get a better inherent sense of the dramatic arc. Each day, I will write a short post here about the play of the day.

Play #17:

Jack and Jill by Jane Martin

Jane Martin, often called the "mysterious Jane Martin" because she never wants to be seen in person, first came to attention with the collection of female monologues, Talking With. Her play, Keely and Du, which deals with the controversial subject of abortion, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and won an American Theatre Critics Association Award for Best New Play. The award was accepted on her behalf by playwright Jon Jory. Jon Jory also directs the original productions of  most of her plays. 

Because Jane Martin is (most likely) Jon Jory. 

I am not telling tales out of school here, though Jon Jory has never publicly admitted to being Jane Martin (though even his Wikipedia page mentions that he is rumored to being Jane Martin). My playwriting professor at Bennington, Gladden Schrock, who knows Mr. Jory and worked with him, flat out told us that Mr. Jory wrote as Jane Martin when he wanted to explore themes that dealt a great deal women and gender issues. 

Whether Jory is Jane Martin or not (he probably is), or whether maybe it has become like Andy Kaufman and Tony Clifton and others can take over, is not really a big deal. If a writer feels freer to explore certain things through a pseudonym, more power to them. I wouldn't take it away from anyone. 

And really, it has nothing much to do with my reading of Jack and Jill: A Romance, except, at times, one begins to wonder about certain tropes that Jill espouses, that sometimes feels like a male feminist writing from the point of view of what they perceive a feminist's mindset to be. Or maybe I just feel that way because I know the rumors about Jory being Martin, who knows? 

But I don't think so.

Jack and Jill: A Romance premiered at the Humana Festival directed by (surprise!) Jon Jory. It is a two-character play, with dressers who help dress the actors onstage. Jack and Jill meet at a library, begin a relationship, marry, divorce and meet again. It moves fast with accessible dialogue that is often witty and clever. Both Jack and Jill have monologues directly to the audience throughout, giving us more insight into their characters, but, really, it is the back and forth between characters that is most engaging (at least when Martin restrains from some of the preachiness). 

I don't think there is anything new about Jack and Jill: A Romance, and there wasn't anything new in 1996 when it premiered, not even the uncertain ending. The theme is about men and women connecting. The edges that overlaps and the areas that we don't understand about one another. 

But just because something is familiar territory, doesn't mean it isn't told in an interesting, entertaining manner. I imagine that this show could be quite the crowd pleaser with the right cast, and a director who knows how to keep the action moving between the many scene changes (this would die onstage with too much time between scenes... absolutely die). And to its credit, the piece attempts to explore relationships and issues between the genders, and for the most apart avoids certain stereotypes. 

I can't help but say that, in the final analysis, I found the play pretty much harmless. I could watch it and be fine and enjoy myself. 

But I can't imagine it sticking with me. 

30 PLAYS IN 30 DAYS: Play #15 "Trudy Blue" by Marsha Norman

 

I have decided for the month of September to read 30 plays in 30 days. It is my belief that, if possible, a play should be read in one sitting to get a better inherent sense of the dramatic arc. Each day, I will write a short post here about the play of the day.

Play #15

Trudy Blue by Marsha Norman

Marsha Norman received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for her play 'Night Mother, and wrote the book and lyrics for a Broadway musical adaptation of The Secret Garden, which scored her Tony and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical. I was mostly familiar with three things about her:  a writer's handbook in which she wrote an essay giving advice (including to read 4 hours a day and not let anyone ask you why you were just sitting around reading), her play Traveler in the Dark that a friend and fellow student directed at Bennington, and her play Loving Daniel Boone (which I read because the premiere production starred my playwriting professor Gladden Schrock in the title role). 

Trudy Blue originally grew from a short one act called Lunch With Ginger, which is still a scene in the play. The play centers around Ginger, a middle-aged writer who lives a great deal in her mind, struggling with a marriage that has gone stale and a life that doesn't feel all that happy to her. The play moves back and forth between what is real, what is imagined, and what is remembered, and has a tendency to honestly feel like it can operate outside of or general ideas of space and time. In this regard, Norman achieves a true kind of daydream-like quality that goes well with the character. Ginger is working on a new book, featuring a lead character named Trudy Blue, a stand-in for Ginger who knows exactly what she wants, knows exactly what she wants to say, and is unafraid of doing what will make her happy. 

Some may be bothered by the fact that Norman doesn't give us exact answers, but such things rarely bother me, so long as I have been interested enough in the journey. And while I do feel the play could be shaved a little bit, Ginger is an interesting character, and, as someone who daydreams quite a bit myself, I could relate to her. I think most writers could. I mean, who doesn't wish they could write a character who could solve all of their problems and be as brave and bold as we all secretly wish we could be?

Trudy Blue was first performed at the prestigious Humana Festival of New plays in 1995, but, from what I could find, is not the most popular of Norman's works. Regardless, it is a play that I think would be interesting to see on the stage.