"Killers and Other Family" by Lucy Thurber

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

(You know, recently it’s been only me so maybe I should kill that.)

(... Eh.)

(Another time, maybe.)

This is one of my favorite current playwrights working today. The current League of Theatre Women Playwrights Working in New York Right Now (as I concisely call them) is super strong and interesting and writing super cool stuff. Annie Baker is one of them, as is this amazing woman: Lucy Thurber. Many of Lucy Thurber’s plays kind of work like: “take someone you probably grew up next door to and then imagine if their lives were super fucked.” Her characters are wounded and dynamic and strong and very, very interesting. I highly recommend not just this play but Ashville and Scarcity, as well. Check her out. It’s real.

KILLERS AND OTHER FAMILY

by Lucy Thurber

This play is about a woman who has finally escaped from her past only to have it walk in her front door. Elizabeth is a Ph.D candidate two weeks from finishing her dissertation, living with her girlfriend, Claire. Elizabeth’s brother, Jeff knocks on the door unexpectedly with their childhood friend Danny in tow. Elizabeth is enraged that Jeff has brought Danny into her home, and it’s revealed that Danny continually raped her when she was younger, and that Jeff knew about this. Jeff begs Elizabeth for money -- the two boys are on the run because Danny has killed a woman, and they’re headed to Mexico to escape. He goes into the bedroom to sleep and Danny and Elizabeth have sex -- the consensuality is confused at best. End Act 1. In Act 2, Claire comes home, surprised to find people in her apartment but thrilled to finally meet Elizabeth’s “family and friends.” She and Danny have a conversation in which she’s revealed to be a suburban child of privilege: a sharp contrast to the rural poverty Elizabeth grew up in. The meeting of the four escalates, and Elizabeth reveals both her past with Danny and what transpired that morning. Claire attempts to leave, and Jeff bars the door as Danny jumps her in jealousy over Elizabeth’s love. Elizabeth pulls him off, calms him down, and finally convinces him to leave and turn himself in. Jeff leaves with him, and Elizabeth and Claire huddle on the couch. End of play.

It’s hard to read

Everyone is desperate

The stakes are very, very high.

So we’re looking at our protagonist

ELIZABETH

Elizabeth is in the middle of a crisis -- she’s managed to wrestle her way out of poverty into education and a life she can be proud of, and her past has waltzed its way into her apartment. She knows at this point that Danny has killed someone, and she’s just revealed to Claire that she has slept with Danny again, earlier that day. Everyone (Jeff, Danny, Claire) is in the room, and tensions are high. Elizabeth loves Danny -- like a smoker who has stopped smoking but suddenly has a cigarette -- her relationship to him is like an addiction that she knows is unhealthy but has no power over once he’s in the room, and it all has to do with her past. Claire has just confronted Elizabeth with a clear question: “What’s going on here?” and “What is the shit going on between you and this guy?”

ELIZABETH: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m gonna make them leave, I promise,I will -- you have to give me a chance. There’s something wrong with me. Can you see? I never did change. I just moved pieces of me around. It all depends on what you present first and how hard you believe in it.

CLAIRE: Elizabeth --

ELIZABETH: Danny likes to play games. Danny always hated that I went to college. He just wanted me home. I liked college, though, it was my favorite time. Of course, I’m having trouble remembering right now --

CLAIRE: Elizabeth what are you talking about?

ELIZABETH: Oh, I’m sorry. I always talk to you in my head. I’ve been talking to you all day and I already explained everything but -- now when you’re here I don’t know how -- He likes to be told stories. That’s how it always starts. When I was little they were only fairy tales from school… Sometimes when I was little and he would sit me on his lap, I’d pretend his face was mine. If you look at us the right way we look just the same. Of course all I really wanted was for him just to hold me. That’s why I didn’t mind when he started kissing me, because I wanted to be held so badly.

(... long break of conversation between the four of them, but I really like this final line…)

ELIZABETH: You know how scary it is to wake up and find out you’re just where you left yourself? Years and years pass and it’s all just the same. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it. I really believed it was impossible for me to do it.

Oof.

I like this monologue. It’s got a good shape to it, is contemporary, and no one knows this play. So good luck! As always, if you use it please buy/read the whole play and post anything you come up with on our page!

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

Dog Sees God by Bert V. Royal

In honor of 'The Peanuts Movie,' here is the classic beloved character, Lucy Van Pelt.

Alright, 'classic' might be stretching it.

'Beloved' even more so.

This is Lucy... all grown up.

'Dog Sees God' is about the Peanuts characters as teenagers.  Snoopy has been put down because he had rabies and killed a little yellow bird, Linus (Van) is a pothead and smoked his blanket, and Lucy (Van's Sister) is in a mental care facility for pyromania. Marcy and Tricia throw a wild party (a brilliant sequence as the characters transition from the traditional Peanuts song and dance into a contemporary, crazy drug and alcohol induced rave.) Beethoven, the social outcast (who is taunted and bullied after being sexually abused by his dad), shows up to the party.  After an altercation with the "cool" kids when Matt (the gang leader) throws him to the ground, CB helps him up and kisses him in front of everyone.

After the party, CB visits Van's Sister at the mental hospital.  In the first half of the scene, he tells her what happened.  She freaks out, but is proud of him "for setting one foot outside the norm and giving no apologies."  In the second half of the scene, CB questions why she lit the little red headed girls' hair on fire.  Van's Sister does everything possible to avoid answering him. Finally, CB gets fed up with her sarcasm and avoidance and starts to walk out.  She finally admits-

I was pregnant.  Don’t worry.  It wasn’t yours.  I had just gotten an abortion the day before and the next day in Biology, we were ironically talking about reproduction.  I’m listening to Miss Rainy talking about fallopian tubes, the uterus, eggs and I’m feeling sick to my stomach already.  Trying to zone out on anything I can.  So I start reading a note over Miss Puritanical Princess’ shoulder and she’s telling her friend “how happy she is that she’s a virgin and that she’s going to stay that way until she gets married and how repulsed she is by all the whores at our school.”  Without thinking, I reached into my pocket for my cute, little, red Bic lighter and lit her cute, little, red hair on fire.  And every day in therapy, they ask me if I’m sorry yet.  And I just can’t be.  No matter how hard I try.  Bitches like that make me sick.  They’ve made me sick.  I am officially sick, psychotic, unrepentant, and unremorseful.  I’ve been branded a sociopath and I have no choice but to believe it.

Hey, blockhead!  You forgot your scarf!

August: Osage County by Tracy Letts

EAT THE FISH BITCH!

Here, we have a crazy, dysfunctional play about a crazy, dysfunctional family.  Everyone is crazy in their own way, because everyone is trying to find a way to cope.

Violet, the matriarch, is diagnosed with cancer.  She copes by popping pills.  Beverly, her husband, drinks.  "That's the bargain we've struck"  he says.  In the prologue, he and Violet argue about hiring Johnna, a young Native American woman, for extra help around the house.  The prologue (and later the play) end with quotes from the T.S. Eliot poem 'The Hollow Men.'

A tragic event brings the family together- Beverly has disappeared.  Violet's daughters- Barbra, Ivy, and Karen,their families, and her sister Mattie Fae all arrive to support her.

Jean, the youngest of the bunch, is Barbra's daughter.  They suspect suicide.  Jean copes just like her father- she smokes weed.  When Johnna doesn't stop her from smoking, Jean opens up to her about the family drama she's been through. (This is when the monologue occurs.)

At the end of the act the Sheriff  (and Barbra's ex) tells the family that Beverly's body has been found- he drowned.

In act two, the fights escalate and eventually get physical.  Karen's fiance Steve slimily teases Jean about smoking pot.  This teasing, and the families fighting, escalate through the entire act. Nothing is resolved.  Jean and Steve smoke together, and by the end of a shared joint, Steve turns off the light and the audience hears nothing but heavy breathing.  Johnna, noticing something is wrong, turns on the light and beats Steve with a skillet.  The family rushes in, no one knows what happened, and everyone starts screaming at everyone else.

And then we arrive at the fantastic dinner scene.  Violet and her daughters are attempting to have dinner, during which Ivy hopes to confess to her mother that she is in a relationship with Little Charles, her dopey cousin.  What she does not know is that Little Charles is actually her half-brother.  Barbra does know this, and tries to shut down the conversation, eventually screaming at her mother to eat the fucking fish.  Despite her efforts, all is revealed.  Ivy leaves in shock and despair.  The play ends with Barbra leaving, Violet calling out for her daughters, and when no one comes, to Johnna and they quote the final lines of T.S. Eliot "this is the way the world ends... and then you're gone..."

The title comes from a poem by Howard Starks-

Dust hangs heavy in the dull catalpas;

the cicadas are scraping interminably

at the heart-thickened air—

no rain in three weeks, no real breeze all day,

In the dim room,

the blinds grimly endure the deadly light,

protecting the machined air,

as the watchers watch the old lady die.

“I’m eighty-six,” she said: “it’s high time—

now John’s gone.”

And to the town’s ne doctor

“You’re a good boy,” (she had a great-grandson

who was older,) “so don’t fiddle around.

When fighting was needed, I fought –

But I’m all fought out.”

and later—

“John left when he was due—well—I’m due now,”

“I promise, “ he whispered;

I’ve learned when right is right.”

Now, her daughters sit – – and her grand-daughters –

and at night, her grandsons- –

and her pampered sons-in-law.

One of these, not known for eloquence – –

or tears—said, last week,

“Ola, chance gave me a mother,

but God gave me two.”

She smiled at that,

“yes, I had one boy; god gave me seven more.”

She lies under the sheet,

Thin as one of her old kitchen knives,

honed by years and use to fragile sharpness,

but too well-tempered to break just yet.

It’s two days since she spoke—

“Don’t cry, Bessie;

puppies just die, that’s all.”

(A girl again,

gentling baby sister.)

All the watchers can do

is wipe her dry mouth with gentle wetness.

They watch her old hands and murmur—

How many biscuits

and pans of gravy?

How many babies soothed

and bee-stings daubed with bluing?

How many lamp-wicks trimmed?

How many berries picked?

words circling

as her quiet breath winds down to silence.

No sobs, for she was due, but tears, a few,

selfish ones,

before the calls, the “arrangements”

to put her to bed, beside John,

on the dusty hilltop.

Standing there,

we look up from the dry clods

and the durable grey stone,

upwards—

expectantly—

westwards—

where the clouds grow dark.

JEAN'S MONOLOGUE

Mom and Dad don't mind.  You won't get in trouble  or anything.

I just mean that they don't mind that I smoke pot.  Dad doesn't.  Mom kind of does.  She thinks it's bad for me.  I think the real reason it bugs her is because dad smokes pot too and she wishes he wouldn't.   

Dad's a lot cooler than mom really.  Well, that's not true.   He's just cooler in that way I guess.  

He's fucking one of his students which is pretty uncool if you ask me. Some people would think that’s cool, like those dicks who teach with him in the Humanities Department because they’re all fucking their students or wish they were fucking their students.  “Lo-liii-ta.”   I mean I don't care and all.  He can fuck whoever he wants and that's who teachers meet, students. He was just a turd the way he went about it, and didn’t give mom a chance to respond or anything.  What sucks now is that mom’s watching me like a hawk because she thinks I’ll go on some post-divorce freak out and become some heroin addict or shoot everybody at school or God forbid, lose my virginity.  I don’t know what it is about dad splitting that put mom on hymen patrol.

Mom freaked when she got the call from Aunt Ivy this morning, just like… freaked.  I’ve never seen her like that.  I couldn’t get her to calm down.  It was weird.  I guess it’s not weird that she freaked out, but like, to see your mom freak like that, like you’ve never seen before, y’know?  And we’re real close.  So imagine you see your parents one day just totally lose their shit just like ‘whoa.’

Don’t say anything about Mom and Dad splitting up okay?  It’s kind of low-key.