Obstructions: This play will have…a song, a resolution, a crazy adventure, at least two more well-crafted monologues, several recognizable popular figures.
The play begins with a classical ballet partner dance. Three figures, dressed in deep, rich colors (the colors we most often associate with love) weave in and around one another to a slow, sweet melody. This dance should look like the way love should be. There is lust, lingering, grief, and finally, sweet recognition. The dancers come to rest at one point in a tableau; the music halts abruptly. EDITH enters stage left, with JANE, her friend, in low light.
EDITH
I want to knock them down. Is this an unnatural impulse?
JANE
Hush. This looks like the way love should be.
EDITH
I know. And I hate you for saying that. What a clichéd, over-romanticized thing to say.
The dance continues immediately, the music is a little lower, Edith and Jane watch from stage left, huddled against the wings. LUCILLE and MARK enter stage right with no fanfare. The dance continues. In low light, the couple sort of rustle against one another. Lucille looks painfully bored. She yawns. Mark shoves against her. Lucille grins stupidly and the two begin a silly, inelegant game of footsie standing up. All as if watching the ballet.
JANE
Is that your mother?
EDITH
Where? (Lights come up sharply on Mark and Lucille, now nibbling at one another in a ridiculously flirtatious way. They rustle and make a lot of noise; mime as if they are disturbing other viewers and this doesn’t faze them at all. Jane and Edith start to watch this “dance” intensely. In the background, the real ballet ends, the dancers curtsy and bow, miming as if they see applause, and then they skip offstage. All focus is now on Lucille and Mark, who have just begun to kiss.)
JANE
Let’s go, Edie. (Jane moves to pull her transfixed friend away) Come on, babe.
EDITH
Look at her. She’s a sloppy kisser.
JANE
Edie.
EDITH
Tacky, too. I don’t think I could come up with anything tackier than making out during the Joffrey Ballet.
JANE
Sweetie….
EDITH
I don’t understand her.
JANE
Well, that’s how it is with parents, you know? They just…they fuck with you. And then they fuck up themselves.
EDITH
Everybody does that. I don’t think you have to be a parent.
JANE
Please, Edie, let’s go out tonight. I’ll buy you dinner. (Lights dim on Jane and Edie, who still stand rooted to the spot, and Lucille and Mark keep going. They move center stage and Edie and Jane exit into the shadows; they’re no longer at the ballet. Perhaps a few gestures to indicate fumbling with keys, or lying down, but suddenly the pair are undressing, making love in the center stage space. A few gestures mimic the dance from earlier)
MARK
God, you are so beautiful. Why me?
LUCILLE
No, no, no. Hush. (She kisses Mark)
MARK
Your skin is beautiful. Your eyes are beautiful. You’re soft.
LUCILLE
You had me at hello.
MARK
You look twenty-five. You really do. Not a day older.
LUCILLE
That’s a genetic secret. (She kisses him again) Please stop talking.
MARK
I want to write poetry about you. (Lucille visibly falters, but presses on. She mounts him. Grunting, snorting noises. Mark is an awkward partner, his pace is unsteady and his moans over-exuberant. Still, Lucille enjoys herself. They climax together. She rolls off of him, starts to pull her clothes over her head, checks her watch.) Lucy?
LUCILLE
I have to go make dinner. (She fluffs her hair, checks her appearance in a compact she pulls out her purse)
MARK
For your husband?
LUCILLE
(Her eyes sharpen) Yes. Yes, Mark, for my husband.
MARK
I’m jealous of your dinner, that’s all. (Beat) What will you make him?
LUCILLE
I don’t know. Thank you for the ballet. (She moves to leave)
MARK
You hated it.
LUCILLE
I didn’t hate it. I didn’t understand it.
MARK
You didn’t have to understand it. Did it make you feel anything?
LUCILLE
(Thinks for a moment) Horny.
MARK
That’s a childish answer. (She sharpens her gaze again)
LUCILLE
Don’t patronize me.
MARK
Baby I know you’re smart, I’m not patronizing you. I just…this is my…livelihood? Passion? Too trite. Art and love and the middle-ground they make. I think if you look you’ll find something to see. (He gesticulates, genuinely but overexuberantly, throughout this staggered speech)
LUCILLE
(Lucille holds Mark’s gaze for one moment. It’s etched in her face that she finds him a pitiable fool) Goodnight, Mark. (Lights down on Mark, Lucille gathers herself, smooths down the front of her suit, dials a number into a cell phone as she walks, in circles, around the space. While she walks the world changes: the sound of crickets builds slowly, twilight appears. A scrim lifts and we see the façade of one of those terrible, new age flimsy houses with a bad and hasty design) Honey? I’m late coming home from the office. Yes, I still love you. (She snaps off the phone and stops, pulls a grotesque looking mashed packet of cigarettes out of her purse, sits on the porch, breaks down. The door opens, MYSTIC enters and exits out to sit on the porch besides Lucille. She moves oddly and quietly, not entirely human, sits a few spots away from weeping Lucille)
MYSTIC
Do you believe in plagiarism?
LUCILLE
I’m not sorry.
MYSTIC
That’s not what I asked, my dear girl.
LUCILLE
You don’t even live here.
MYSTIC
I don’t live anywhere.
LUCILLE
Are you homeless?
MYSTIC
Why don’t you treat me like a diary? I will go away very soon, and no one will know me, and you’ll feel better.
LUCILLE
I feel fine. I’m not sorry.
MYSTIC
The worth of a man is not from his pitfalls but his prowess.
LUCILLE
…I’m sorry?
MYSTIC
Benjamin Franklin may or may not have said that.
LUCILLE
I think in words. I’m not sorry. I just wish I could have the sentences in my head, I wish I knew the reasons…(she’s exasperated, she stops. Sort of being silly, she pulls out three cigarettes from the mashed back, sticks them all in her mouth, and attempts to light them with a plastic Bic she pulls from her purse. Successful after a few tries, Lucille coughs maniacally. Her cigarettes create an enormous mass of smoke, an unreasonable amount of smoke. They engulf the Mystic. She disappears. Enter LARS from the house)
LARS
Lucy? Lucy? (Seeing her, she hastily stubs out her make-shift cigar thingamajig) Do you have any more of those? (Not waiting for a response) No, I’m just kidding. Don’t smoke. Edith has asthma.
LUCILLE
I know that. How was your day?
LARS
It was long. (Beat) Kevin wouldn’t let me leave until around six p.m today. Latest I’ve ever stayed, maybe, which isn’t so bad because I should stay till six every day—but there was an enormous brief due. Enormous. Make or break the company enormous. It wasn’t my responsibility but I did it anyways, I wrote this bad play. (Fumbling) I turned in that big, fat, sweaty brief.
LUCILLE
Did you take your medication today?
LARS
No, it’s just me. My character is slipping. I’ll do some focus exercises to get back into it. (Outward, to audience) I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you had to see this.
LUCILLE
It’s alright, they make mistakes, too. (As Lars in the background is launching into a very thorough and noisy vocal warm-up, Lucy calls to him over his din) I had a nice day at work. (Beat, noises from Lars) I fucked another man today. (Lars makes no notice of this, but keeps going on with his mad gesticulating) Jesus, you’re not doing it right! (Suddenly exasperated, Lucille hops up and rights Lars’ neck on his shoulders, faces him forward, repeats a few of his exercises) Now, keep going. I have shocked you. Respond accordingly.
LARS
(Breathing deeply, centering himself) I’m not surprised. I’m not sad. I don’t care if you tell me or not.
LUCILLE
Tell you what?
LARS
How big his dick is, how sweet his smile his, how endearing his poetry…
LUCILLE
I hate poetry. (She looks out at audience, suddenly jaded) They’re not even paying attention. What are you doing after this?
LARS
My daughter has a recital at school. (He finally finishes his warm-up. Looks out at audience tentatively, reassures himself he’s not being watched, eases down on the porch) She hates ballet, but Karen makes her do it anyways. I’m bringing her a basket of candy afterwards so she can eat it smugly in front of all the other anorexic twelve year olds.
LUCILLE
My mother made me do ballet, too. It’s something about mothers.
LARS
Grace, maybe? Karen says she wants her to be graceful.
LUCILLE
What, so she can snatch a husband later?
LARS
(hurt) No. So she won’t stumble as much, so she can walk around easy. I think she’s beautiful up there, anyways. I’ll let her play baseball, fuck it, she makes me proud whatever she does.
LUCILLE
Let her play baseball! Tatum O’Neal turned out alright. (Lars doesn’t get this reference)
LARS
Ha-ha. Did you hear that English actor died?
LUCILLE
How?
LARS
They say he took a bottle of something. To sleep. He was playing that awful…
LUCILLE
Don’t even tell me, I can’t imagine how terrible it must have been to go there—poor guy.
LARS
Poor guy. Go there. Funny, huh? (Simultaneously, both shade their eyes to the back of the theatre, nod as if listening, then suddenly perk up and go back to the top of the scene)
LUCILLE
Are you playing it weird this time?
LARS
How’s that?
LUCILLE
Do you know what I’m going to tell you, or are you oblivious?
LARS
(thinks for a moment) I think I know. But I’m a buffoon, right? I’m a fool?
LUCILLE
You’re definitely a buffoon. (The two give a botched secret handshake together, begin in their opening places) The mystic has just left.
LARS
Lucy? Lucy? (Entering again) Do you have any of those? No, I’m just kidding. (Oddly drawn out) Don’t smoke. Edith has asthma.
LUCILLE
(entirely different than before) I know. How was your day at work?
LARS
Oh, absolutely wretched. (He comes and sits beside her) I want to quit.
LUCILLE
You do?
LARS
I do.
LUCILLE
You can’t quit.
LARS
I know I can’t, I know I can’t. But soon, I hope to.
LUCILLE
We have to wait until Edith finishes her first year—
LARS
I know that. I’m not quitting. Forget I said anything. (Beat) Where is she?
LUCILLE
Who?
LARS
Edith?
(Beat. Someone has forgotten a line)
LUCILLE
Whoa, that was different.
LARS
A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
LUCILLE
Is that…?
MYSTIC
(wandering upstage) Jonathan Swift. (Cackles mirthlessly, lights fade.)
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