52-pickup, The Pickle Play, Hrotsvitha’s Vision, Hermeneutic Circlejerk, The Drum Lesson, El Bobo

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52 Pickup

Janiya, a young woman is in the hospital on a mandatory suicide watch after her third attempt. She is visited by her ex-girlfriend Cil. As they both struggle with the aftermath of the attempt, the two women arrive at a dynamic that might be a game-changer.

The Pickle Play

What can you do when life is too easy, when things are going just a little too smoothly?

The pickle store has the solution! They can sell you any kind of pickle you want... a financial pickle, a romantic pickle, a career pickle!

But... transactions aren't as simple as they seem in the the pickle store. One pickle seems to lead to another, as the customers find themselves increasingly entangled with the irascible owner. There is the gay man whose love life is languishing in a middle-class rut, the older man bored with his retirement, the policeman looking to bust up a robbery, and finally the homeless man seeking to offload some of the pickles that plague his life.

A short play about the relativity of happiness.

Hrotsvitha’s Vision

Hrotsvitha’s prayers are interrupted by a vision of woman, Christopher Marie St. John, who is translating her dramas a thousand years in the future. In the vision, Hrotsvitha becomes aware that the woman has become demoralized and she has stopped working. Her original manuscript was destroyed by fire during the Easter Rising in Dublin.

Hrotsvitha becomes very angry and lectures her future translator about how war is used to distract women from focusing on the great secret for liberation, which is the secret text of all her plays. Revealing the secret, she exorts Christopher to start over, again and again, if necessary to transmit this radical message.

Hermeneutic Circlejerk

The play opens in a café in Paris in 1977. Michel-Henri, a middle-aged academic, sits at a small table with a bottle of wine. Jacques-Pierre, his colleague, rushes in with the news that Parliament has just rejected a petition they both signed, to abolish the age of consent and decriminalize “consenting” relations between adults and children. Jacques-Pierre is distraught, blaming Michel-Henri for having persuaded him to sign it.

Michel-Henri argues that it was the right thing to do, and that they must no longer settle for a life of shame and hiding, but demand that society change to accommodate their sexual desires. Jacques-Pierre declares his intention to repudiate the friendship and starts to leave. Michel-Henri wrestles him to the ground and begins to unfold his plan for inventing a new language and philosophy that will support pedophilia. He demands that Jacques-Pierre join him in this project, but Jacques-Pierre resists.

At this point, their interaction moves into a perpetration scenario, with Michel-Henri overriding Jacques-Pierre’ protests and Jacques-Pierre becoming more and more submissive. The play ends with his capitulation, and the founding of postmodernism.

The Drum Lesson

This one-act for five women drummers explores the dramatic uses of the language of the drum.

In the play, the drum teacher Aisha has lost control of her class: One student is improvising with no attention to the directives from the teacher; another student who keeps losing her rhythm has voluntarily moved herself out of the circle; a third student has not even unpacked her drum.

Confronted with the lack of unity in the class, Aisha explains that the only way she knows how to teach is through the drum: It teaches her and it teaches through her. As tensions among the students escalate, one of the drummers breaks into chaotic drumming. At first, this is perceived as an act of aggression, but it quickly becomes evident that something more serious is happening. When the student fails to resond to attempts at verbal or physical intervention, Aisha tries to reach her via the drum.

Her initial attempts at “call-and-response” are rebuffed, but slowly the teacher manages to establish a dialogue with her runaway student. As Aisha “drums her down from the ledge,” the other students, chastened by this lesson in alternative language, rejoin the circle.

El Bobo

This is a fun screenplay, written specifically for amateur camera work on a laptop. A wealthy employer has secretly filmed a little "experiment" with Julietta, the Latina woman who cleans his home. In the interview, he makes increasingly absurd excuses for docking her pay. She responds with stoicism. Finally, he explodes... berating her for her failure to stand up for herself. He pays her the full wages, she thanks him and leaves. The employer then turns to the audience to extemporize on his theme of what a "ninny" she was. Suddenly, the voice of Julietta is heard off-screen, ordering him to put his head down on the keyboard of the laptop where he is filming. She makes him put his wallet, cell phone, and watch on the keyboard. Threatening to shoot him, she orders him to say "Gracias." Suddenly, her face fills the screen: "Just kidding. No gun"... She exits, laughing: "Que bobo!" The employer slowly lifts his head. Realizing he is still filming himself, he slams down the lid of the laptop.