[orphan piece from maybe a year ago just unearthed on hard-drive]
To Whom it May Concern:
In the saturday edition of your paper, hidden way back in the Lifestyles section, I came across a lead sentence that has prompted me to write this missive:
The article, a review of a presentation of one-act plays by a local theatre company, opens with the line: "Writing a play is harder than it looks."
Nervously, I scanned the page for a by-line to assure myself that Yogi Berra had not become involved in writing theatre critism, found this was not the case, & was then side-swiped by a vision of David Mamet doing one-armed push-ups, barking out staccato lines of a dialogue at a pretty amanuesis scribbling furiously in a legal pad, who occasionally paused to load up one of those tennis ball launching things aimed at Mr. Mamet's midsection, lest he find himself struggling with writers block & need to get the juices flowing again.
Then I remembered a time when I fancied myself a bit of a playwright, grew my hair long, affected a poofy shirt & an Oxfordian accent, drank only the most expensive malt liquor, learned a few things about wine (such as where to get some without paying for it.) , locked myself away in my apartment, surrounding myself with multiple cigarettes in multiple ashtrays, & wrestled furiously with my muse. (Until the restraining order, that is, at which point I had to settle for wrestling with the couch cushions.)
Occasionally a concerned neighbor would poke her head in, find me sweaty & disheveled, idly scratching my chin with my typewriter.
"Donavin, my sweet, this playwrighting business is destroying you! Abandon it, I beg of you, lest it blight that precious flower, your soul!"
At which I would snarl like a cornered animal & hurl a half-filled liquor bottle at the door-frame (a practice I soon abandoned for designing & constructing elaborate booby-traps.)
At any rate, my magnum opus never congealed (coincidentally, that was also the title of my unfinished work) & I survived the ordeal with nothing to show for it save a lengthy, heavily-doodled synopsis involving, among other things;
1) a jive-talking robot,
2) a re-creation of the Battle of Bull Run,
3) an apelike creature from the future with the ability to "shape-shift" at will,
4) the acting debut of the delectable Miss Kristi Yamaguchi who, in a rather poignant segment emphasising all of our vulnerability as human beings & perkiness as figure skaters, would perform entirely naked (Nothing exploitive, mind you: simple, everyday tasks such as chopping carrots, sorting through the mail, watching Jeopardy & yelling out the answers, & having a pillow fight with her sexy girlfriends),
5) &, most importantly, no fewer than 16 sets of identical twins, which of course leads to all sorts of wacky misunderstandings & romantic entanglements.
Ah well. I can only weep for what might have been. (You can too! Especially the parts about Miss Yamaguchi.)
Anyway, the above-quoted sentence has inspired me to pull my poofy shirt out of the closet, get tanked at a gallery opening & a funeral, &, on the way home, purchase a carton Galoises & a few 40's of Le Skanque Femme, & concoct the following scenario for your personal edification.
(The Scene: An underground bunker in a secret location near the Pentagon. At the head of a large, polished table covered with maps, crumpled manuscripts--typed, handwritten, scribbled on napkins & on the backs of pizza boxes--& half-empty cartons of Chinese food & tepid cups of coffee sits PLAYMASTER GENERAL ANTON CHEKHOV, a bear of a man resembling a younger Ed Asner. [He could be portrayed by me--while I have no resemblance to a young Ed Asner, I could really use the work.]
On all sides of the table--probably four--sit various other officers engaged in Operation Seagull. They've just put in a lengthy & debate-filled night but are nearing completion of the first draft. Tempers are running high. Fatigue is beginning to wear down even the most hardened Social Realist veteran. And yet--there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope that this thing is finally coming together.)
CHEKHOV: Men, it's been a long, hard struggle. We've lost a few of our number to madness, despair, day jobs, girlfriends,-- & THAT makes those of you left all the more important to wrestling this thing to the end. Dammit, the theatre-going public is RELYING on us. We're approaching that twilight hour in this endeavor when BY SHEER FORCE OF WILL, we're gonna take this formless mass in front of us, this soup of emotion, & turn it into something we can start shopping around. It may be a nationally endowed theatre with deep pockets in a major metropolital area, or it may be some community theatre in Podunk, America. What's important is that we're all on board in this thing. Anyone bails out at this point, anyone quails, anyone leaves their back-bone at home &, by god, I'll shoot you myself. DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?!?
(Murmurs around the table. Nervous shuffling in seats. Finally, a timid young man raises his hand.)
CHEKHOV: Seargent! DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION?
SEARGENT: um...sir yes...um sir....
CHEKHOV: I'm a-reaching for my side-peice unless you speak up, son!
SEARGENT: Sir, yes, sir! It's about that last part sir!
CHEKHOV: Would you be refering to where Jonathan rushes off the stage, eyes wild, clutching the pistol, locks himself in the study--all those assembled hear the gunshot, the doctor breaks the door down, enters the study, returns ashen-face, & announces, his voice breaking, what all present already know but nonetheless beleive may have been averted, somehow--that young Jonathan has shot himself?
SEARGENT: Sir, yes, sir!
CHEKHOV: I'm waiting, soldier!
SEARGENT: Well, sir--don't you think that it's a bit of a downer? Why does he have to shoot himself? Why can't he just, you know, WOUND himself? Picture this: Gunshot! Doctor rushes in, comes back out & announces, "Young Jonathan has shot off his little toe!" The ingenue goes, "Good god! I better go fetch some Bactine! Infection! Infection!" --They help him limp back out into the parlor, she lovingly dabs at his foot. Flash forward a couple of years--theyre happily married, he's smoking his pipe, she's baking a pie, a couple of chubby little infants are toddling around, gurgling merrily. He says, "Y'know, darling, that was a pretty rough patch we went through a few years back, but everything turned out just fine!" They sing a song. Not a dry eye in the house!
(Silence. CHEKHOV turns to the Admiral at his left.)
CHEKHOV: Admiral!
ADMIRAL: General!
CHEKHOV: Who the HELL is this man? I don't remember ever hiring him.
ADMIRAL: Well, General, he sort of came with the bunker. Like Bartleby.
CHEKHOV: Bartleby?
ADMIRAL: Chap we found in the corner. Who thinks he's a water cooler.
BARTLEBY (cheerfully): Glub! Glub!
(CHEKHOV frowns at the dixie-cup near his elbow.)
CHEKHOV: Johnson, you've just raised a hell of a lot more questions than you've answered.
ADMIRAL: It's what I do, General.
CHEKHOV: Well, have this Seargent taken out & beaten. The rest of us have work to do! Smith! Find my Strunk & White! Ramirez! I'll need some new ribbon for this typewriter. Jones! Get that sonofabitch Pinter on the horn & tell him I'll need my Poetics back, there's something I need to look up! & we'll need to assemble a crack team of Special Forces to go put the shoulder to those niggardly bastards at the NEA. Move! Move!
Needs work, but there you go. I beleive that it's shortcomings are more than made up for by it's unflinching gaze into the human condition. Or something.
I thank you for your time,
[li'l ol me], Concerned Citizen
To Whom it May Concern:
In the saturday edition of your paper, hidden way back in the Lifestyles section, I came across a lead sentence that has prompted me to write this missive:
The article, a review of a presentation of one-act plays by a local theatre company, opens with the line: "Writing a play is harder than it looks."
Nervously, I scanned the page for a by-line to assure myself that Yogi Berra had not become involved in writing theatre critism, found this was not the case, & was then side-swiped by a vision of David Mamet doing one-armed push-ups, barking out staccato lines of a dialogue at a pretty amanuesis scribbling furiously in a legal pad, who occasionally paused to load up one of those tennis ball launching things aimed at Mr. Mamet's midsection, lest he find himself struggling with writers block & need to get the juices flowing again.
Then I remembered a time when I fancied myself a bit of a playwright, grew my hair long, affected a poofy shirt & an Oxfordian accent, drank only the most expensive malt liquor, learned a few things about wine (such as where to get some without paying for it.) , locked myself away in my apartment, surrounding myself with multiple cigarettes in multiple ashtrays, & wrestled furiously with my muse. (Until the restraining order, that is, at which point I had to settle for wrestling with the couch cushions.)
Occasionally a concerned neighbor would poke her head in, find me sweaty & disheveled, idly scratching my chin with my typewriter.
"Donavin, my sweet, this playwrighting business is destroying you! Abandon it, I beg of you, lest it blight that precious flower, your soul!"
At which I would snarl like a cornered animal & hurl a half-filled liquor bottle at the door-frame (a practice I soon abandoned for designing & constructing elaborate booby-traps.)
At any rate, my magnum opus never congealed (coincidentally, that was also the title of my unfinished work) & I survived the ordeal with nothing to show for it save a lengthy, heavily-doodled synopsis involving, among other things;
1) a jive-talking robot,
2) a re-creation of the Battle of Bull Run,
3) an apelike creature from the future with the ability to "shape-shift" at will,
4) the acting debut of the delectable Miss Kristi Yamaguchi who, in a rather poignant segment emphasising all of our vulnerability as human beings & perkiness as figure skaters, would perform entirely naked (Nothing exploitive, mind you: simple, everyday tasks such as chopping carrots, sorting through the mail, watching Jeopardy & yelling out the answers, & having a pillow fight with her sexy girlfriends),
5) &, most importantly, no fewer than 16 sets of identical twins, which of course leads to all sorts of wacky misunderstandings & romantic entanglements.
Ah well. I can only weep for what might have been. (You can too! Especially the parts about Miss Yamaguchi.)
Anyway, the above-quoted sentence has inspired me to pull my poofy shirt out of the closet, get tanked at a gallery opening & a funeral, &, on the way home, purchase a carton Galoises & a few 40's of Le Skanque Femme, & concoct the following scenario for your personal edification.
(The Scene: An underground bunker in a secret location near the Pentagon. At the head of a large, polished table covered with maps, crumpled manuscripts--typed, handwritten, scribbled on napkins & on the backs of pizza boxes--& half-empty cartons of Chinese food & tepid cups of coffee sits PLAYMASTER GENERAL ANTON CHEKHOV, a bear of a man resembling a younger Ed Asner. [He could be portrayed by me--while I have no resemblance to a young Ed Asner, I could really use the work.]
On all sides of the table--probably four--sit various other officers engaged in Operation Seagull. They've just put in a lengthy & debate-filled night but are nearing completion of the first draft. Tempers are running high. Fatigue is beginning to wear down even the most hardened Social Realist veteran. And yet--there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope that this thing is finally coming together.)
CHEKHOV: Men, it's been a long, hard struggle. We've lost a few of our number to madness, despair, day jobs, girlfriends,-- & THAT makes those of you left all the more important to wrestling this thing to the end. Dammit, the theatre-going public is RELYING on us. We're approaching that twilight hour in this endeavor when BY SHEER FORCE OF WILL, we're gonna take this formless mass in front of us, this soup of emotion, & turn it into something we can start shopping around. It may be a nationally endowed theatre with deep pockets in a major metropolital area, or it may be some community theatre in Podunk, America. What's important is that we're all on board in this thing. Anyone bails out at this point, anyone quails, anyone leaves their back-bone at home &, by god, I'll shoot you myself. DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?!?
(Murmurs around the table. Nervous shuffling in seats. Finally, a timid young man raises his hand.)
CHEKHOV: Seargent! DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION?
SEARGENT: um...sir yes...um sir....
CHEKHOV: I'm a-reaching for my side-peice unless you speak up, son!
SEARGENT: Sir, yes, sir! It's about that last part sir!
CHEKHOV: Would you be refering to where Jonathan rushes off the stage, eyes wild, clutching the pistol, locks himself in the study--all those assembled hear the gunshot, the doctor breaks the door down, enters the study, returns ashen-face, & announces, his voice breaking, what all present already know but nonetheless beleive may have been averted, somehow--that young Jonathan has shot himself?
SEARGENT: Sir, yes, sir!
CHEKHOV: I'm waiting, soldier!
SEARGENT: Well, sir--don't you think that it's a bit of a downer? Why does he have to shoot himself? Why can't he just, you know, WOUND himself? Picture this: Gunshot! Doctor rushes in, comes back out & announces, "Young Jonathan has shot off his little toe!" The ingenue goes, "Good god! I better go fetch some Bactine! Infection! Infection!" --They help him limp back out into the parlor, she lovingly dabs at his foot. Flash forward a couple of years--theyre happily married, he's smoking his pipe, she's baking a pie, a couple of chubby little infants are toddling around, gurgling merrily. He says, "Y'know, darling, that was a pretty rough patch we went through a few years back, but everything turned out just fine!" They sing a song. Not a dry eye in the house!
(Silence. CHEKHOV turns to the Admiral at his left.)
CHEKHOV: Admiral!
ADMIRAL: General!
CHEKHOV: Who the HELL is this man? I don't remember ever hiring him.
ADMIRAL: Well, General, he sort of came with the bunker. Like Bartleby.
CHEKHOV: Bartleby?
ADMIRAL: Chap we found in the corner. Who thinks he's a water cooler.
BARTLEBY (cheerfully): Glub! Glub!
(CHEKHOV frowns at the dixie-cup near his elbow.)
CHEKHOV: Johnson, you've just raised a hell of a lot more questions than you've answered.
ADMIRAL: It's what I do, General.
CHEKHOV: Well, have this Seargent taken out & beaten. The rest of us have work to do! Smith! Find my Strunk & White! Ramirez! I'll need some new ribbon for this typewriter. Jones! Get that sonofabitch Pinter on the horn & tell him I'll need my Poetics back, there's something I need to look up! & we'll need to assemble a crack team of Special Forces to go put the shoulder to those niggardly bastards at the NEA. Move! Move!
Needs work, but there you go. I beleive that it's shortcomings are more than made up for by it's unflinching gaze into the human condition. Or something.
I thank you for your time,
[li'l ol me], Concerned Citizen
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
/http://www.dancingbadger.com/
(I first tried to insert a link directly to the review's page, but for some reason the link didn't work....)