I've been looking for a new play and started a couple that didn't work. So I invited the characters to sit down and talk. This is the beginning of what happened next. START TALKING A Play in One Act Mary F. C. Pratt CHARACTERS PLAYWRIGHT Older woman. JOAN Older woman, a folklorist PATRICIA Joan’s daughter, a businesswoman in a “little suit.” ALEX Joan’s grandchild, Patricia’s child, a teenager. Garbed rebelliously. GRANDMOTHER Older Woman, an artist. RED Grandmother’s grandchild, ten or twelve years old, wearing a red hoodie. LAURA Annie’s daughter, a circus performer, in her late twenties, arty and self-centered. ANNIE Laura’s Mother, middle-aged. Vague and worried. PAT Annie’s boss, an Older Woman who owns a greenhouse. Outspoken, tough. Work clothes. STAGEHAND Unspeaking. SETTING Bare stage, a table, six chairs. Folding chairs available backstage. At Rise: Playwright is sitting at the table working at a computer. Joan, Patricia and Alex, and Grandmother and Red enter in their family groups, silently. After some jockeying around, the grandmothers sit together, the grandchildren sit together. There is space around Patricia. PLAYWRIGHT (Looking around the table.) Okay. Everybody’s here. Good. So start talking. GRANDMOTHER So what do you want us to talk about? What do you want to know? I’ve got work to do. I don’t have all day. PLAYWRIGHT Talk about whatever. Who are you? You say you’ve got work to do? So tell me about it. I don’t have all day, either. I want to kick-start at least one of these plays. So talk. (All start babbling at once.) PATRICIA Wait, wait. Everybody stop. This is ridiculous. Somebody needs to organize it. PLAYWRIGHT Fine, fine. Go for it. PATRICIA All right. We’ll go around the table and introduce ourselves. Say your name and something about what you think you’re supposed to be doing, at least so far. PLAYWRIGHT (A snort, a guffaw—some kind of dismissive noise.) PATRICIA So I’ll start. I’m Patricia. You can probably tell by my clothes that I am a successful business woman. PLAYWRIGHT What business are you in? PATRICIA I have absolutely no idea. Now do you want me to talk or not? PLAYWRIGHT Yes, yes, yes. PATRICIA Then if you’ll be quiet, I’ll get on with it. May I? PLAYWRIGHT Yeah. Go ahead. PATRICIA All right then. As I said, I’m Patricia. Joan is my mother and Alex is my child. I think my mother is getting dotty and should be in some kind of assisted living. So far, I live offstage, on the telephone. I haven’t even had any lines yet. GRANDMOTHER And you’re already a character with distinctive clothes. That’s impressive. PLAYWRIGHT Huh. It is, actually. PATRICIA If you’ve finished interrupting? All right. I am suspicious that Alex is in cahoots with Joan. Perhaps they even laugh at me behind my back. Next? GRANDMOTHER I bet they do. PATRICIA What? They do what? GRANDMOTHER Laugh at you. Behind your back. I know I do. PATRICIA What are you talking about? You don’t even know me. You’re not in my play. GRANDMOTHER Thank God. But in my play my grandchild and I laugh at his/her/their mother, who is my daughter, all the time. PATRICIA What’s up with that, Playwright? Do you laugh at your daughter? PLAYWRIGHT I don’t have a daughter. But this isn’t about me. Talk. PATRICIA We are talking. Next? You. . .(Points at Red.) RED That would be me. I’m Red. You can tell, maybe by the shirt. Anyhow, I’m a kid and I live in a play that’s supposed to be, like, a rewrite of Red Riding Hood, or something. Maybe I’m trying to rescue Grandmother from the sun? Not like she’s sunbathing, I mean, but maybe she got eaten by the sun? Or maybe some wolf eats the sun? Grandmother talked about that a little bit. Or something. It’s all pretty, like, vague or something. I knock on the door a lot. GRANDMOTHER Right. (To Playwright.) And that vagueness is getting tiresome, if you want to know the truth, which, as an artist I assume you do? PLAYWRIGHT I certainly aspire to the truth, yes. And it is getting tiresome for me, too, which is why you’re all here. So keep going. GRANDMOTHER Well then. I am Grandmother. And as she/he/they said, I think it’s a Red Riding Hood riff, but I don’t think it’s very successful so far, though I do like being an artist instead of a pathetic old bedridden lady, and I like throwing out the natural foods crap my daughter makes Red bring to me, and I like feeding her/him/them coffee and chocolate bars instead. I do hope you can make something out of that bit, at least. JOAN You do that, too? Throw out the stuff your daughter sends you? PATRICIA Mother, it isn’t your turn yet. JOAN Oh for goodness’ sake, Patricia. I’m next at the table. GRANDMOTHER Yes, Patricia. For goodness’ sake. (Turns to Joan.) And I’ve done my bit, so go ahead. JOAN (To Grandmother.) Thank you. When this is over, we need to talk. (To all.) In the meantime, I’m in an embryonic play with my grandchild Alex, and with, or possibly despite, my daughter Patricia, who, until now, has, mercifully, been offstage and silent. (Examines Patricia.) So that’s what you look like. Nice suit. PATRICIA No need for personal comments, Mother. JOAN I beg to differ. Playwright, personal comments allowed? PLAYWRIGHT Oh, please!
Category Archives: Silly
OPEN STUDIO POEM #17
Open Studio Poem #17
disco
lickety-split
splendid
magenta
Fairies shelter behind the disco ball
hung in the portal to the kingdom of odd.
After sunset, they emerge lickety-split,
and all night they dance through the city,
their magenta wings flashing splendid
in the lights of streets, and traffic, and stars.
The other occupants of the Open Studio are out to get me, as you can see. But I know where that disco ball hangs, and I know the fairies, too.
PROVERBIAL
I’m reduced to looking up old prompts and combining them. This is the result of two: “make up the world,” and “new proverb.”
PROVERBIAL
In this world, nine stitches
hold Time together.
You’ll need waxed thread,
a curved bookbinder’s needle.
When you have finished
sewing up Time’s spine,
all the eggs in your basket
will hatch at once. One swallow
will settle on your hand
to twitter up the summer
and two will call from a bush,
then lead you on.
Follow them to a meadow
where a red morning sky
is opening the roses.
All the horses you have wished for
will thunder from the mountains.
Choose one and look in its mouth,
but don’t believe a word.
March 23: a bit of doggerel
According to some very early writers, it was on March 23 that God created Adam.
MARCH 23
On this day, or so they say,
God created Man,
gave him an Eden to tend.
Adam, God’s gardener—
Oh well. And then he fell,
and thus began the end.
LOCATIONS
LOCATIONS
“. . around the edges of oddness”
~A Bluebird Fairy by Emily Anderson
You won’t find it
in halls of ivy, or
in the chambers of kings.
It isn’t between the covers
of carefully curated
volumes available only
to members with reservations.
Never in anything
organized
by color or size.
Never in anything glossed
or listed or rewarded.
But look!
It’s teetering on a tooth
from a reconstructed
conodont. Spinning
on the rim of a sixpence
balanced on a pole
balanced on the rubber
nose of a clown
riding a unicycle on
a tightrope stretched
between a stormcloud
and the beak of a raven.
It’s lurking in the garden dirt
under the left thumbnail
of the weaver’s second
daughter. If you want it,
you might start there.
GARDEN PARTY
Garden Party
in honor of ol’ Walt Kelly
We are dancing on a dingbat
in the fury of a gale
while a wiley alligator
winds a kitestring on his tail,
and we do not have to worry
if the fury can’t abate,
for the foolish old bassoon man
has a catfish on his plate
and the streamlined fancy foremast
casts a shadow on our fate.
O, the moral of the story
is the wellspring of the fool,
and the quarrel of the sorry
is the spinning of the spool.
When the roses grow forgotten
in the gardens of the moon
and the chickens all fly skyward
on the string of the balloon,
when the demons do their darndest
to knock acorns from the tree
and the long-awaited pirate ship
comes sailing from the sea,
then we’ll know it’s time to cut the cake
and have a cup of tea.
O, the moral of the story
is the wellspring of the fool,
and the quarrel of the sorry
is the spinning of the spool.
I wrote this ages ago, in imitation of the great Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” poetry.
DOUBLE DACTYLS
DOUBLE DACTYLS
Written over a period of several months. Try it sometime. . .
1.
Hopalong Cassidy
rode into London, his
horse was worn out from the
long ocean dip.
Hop said “The horse is so
antediluvian
next time I’ll make it an
aeroplane trip.”
2.
Thomas Sterns Eliot
wrote lots of poetry,
most of it excellent;
much of it sold.
Thomas, however, was
malasartorial–
pants were too long, so he
wore the things rolled.
3.
Theodore Roosevelt
went out a-trampling in-
to the deep forest in
search of big game.
There by a brook sat a
parasaurolophus–
long thought extinct, and
as huge as its name.
4.
Little Red Riding Hood
minded her mother and
went to her Grandma’s a-
long the right trail.
Wolf never met her, so
characteristically
old Jakob Grimm had to
make up the tale.
5.
Susan B. Anthony,
activist feminist,
thought if she worked hard she’d
get things to change.
Who could have guessed that such
antiestablishment
patterns of thinking would
still seem so strange?
6.
Frederick Wertheimer,
great Common Causer, be-
lieves the campaign style is
wicked and wrong.
Most politicians, so
unsocialistically’re
happy to sell out their
souls for a song.
7.
Little Lord Fauntleroy
dressed in his Sunday best
called on Rebecca of
Sunnybrook Farm.
He never liked her, so
unsympathetically
twisted her elbow which
caused her great harm.
8.
Jolly St. Nicholas,
frequently flying, one
eve in December a-
bandoned his flight:
“I’m sick of being so
omnidirectional.
Christmas be damned, and to
all a Good Night.”
9.
Princess Elizabeth
learned about protocol,
minded her manners and
kept her nails clean.
Good that she did, given
heritability:
when she was grown, they sang
God save the Queen.
10.
Jacqueline Kennedy,
so very stylish–de-
signers kept busy cre-
ating her shifts.
When she was widowed, she
un-Cassandra-ically
didn’t beware of a
Greek bearing gifts.
11.
President Kennedy
lived in the White House and
said “For your country ask
what you can do.”
I think up dactyls and
hypercompulsively
save them in notebooks. So–
how about you?
NOT POETIC
NOT POETIC
~after a discussion with fellow poets about the uses of euphemism
If shit’s not a poetic word,
then how about excrete?
How else can one describe what’s left
of things we creatures eat?
For water one must often “make”
urine ‘s not elegeeic;
and piss though not poetic,
is onomatopeeic.
I’m sorting through my old poems and posting a few that I still like. Including this naughty one, written maybe nine years ago.
March Prompt #7: The Chair that was First Owned by my Great-Great Uncle Asa
THE CHAIR THAT WAS FIRST OWNED BY MY GREAT-GREAT UNCLE ASA
March Prompt #7
He wasn’t actually my uncle. He was my cousin’s uncle, on the other side of her family, you see, but we called him uncle because of that chair. It was passed on to my cousin’s Great Aunt Martha (not my great-aunt, just hers) who was his second daughter-in-law, and she passed it on to her son Freddy, who of course was my cousin’s actual uncle. He was the youngest in that family. Johnny, the middle one, married a Brady girl, and we have, at least my husband has, connections to the Bradys since his sister-in-law’s first husband was a Brady, and her oldest daughter. She didn’t marry his brother till he died. My husband’s. brother. Anyway, Freddy—my cousin’s real Uncle Freddy but we all called him that, used to come to Thanksgiving at my Aunt Bet’s. She was my cousin’s mother, Dad’s sister. So he was my uncle’s brother by marriage. He was the oldest. Never married. No one ever said why, but we have our suspicions. And one Thanksgiving, when he sat down at the table on that rickety old chair—you know how everybody has to haul out all the chairs at Thanksgiving if there’s a big crowd and there was always a big crowd at Aunt Bet’s since she and Dad were two of seven and Uncle John—not the John who married the Brady girl—that was Freddy’s brother—my uncle who was Aunt Bet’s husband had the same name— was one of four and by then they all had kids, except Uncle Freddy, and she always took in strays besides. People, I mean, but she did take in some cats, too, but mostly they stayed up in the barn except that orange one that everybody called Blink because it was missing an eye. But he sat on that old chair and even though he was pretty skinny it broke under him. Bumped his head on the edge of the table on his way down. We all laughed, and so did he, but he was never the same after. Neither was the chair, so Uncle John threw the chair in the fire and Uncle Freddy had to sit on a stack of apple crates they hauled in from the shed.
March Prompts #3: MARCH SNOW
MARCH SNOW
This snowstorm’s not exactly late,
In fact, they happen all the time.
This sort of thing’s what we expect
For living in a Northern clime.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean
It’s something we appreciate–
Wouldn’t it be more comforting
If winter had a closing date?