1/3/2025 From the Bookshelf: DPS Broadway Book Club Collection # 9
RESOLVED IN 2025: READ MORE SCRIPTS!
So, here I am, sitting on two quarters worth of Dramatists Play Service Book Club scripts as well as a whole stack of new scripts picked up on my Thanksgiving Trip to Manhattan. And yet, I’m only consuming them in dribs and drabs – still working on decorating (and unpacking boxes) for my new home and spending quality time with the TV Binge-inator. But even dribbing and drabbing can lead to to-do items being completed, so herewith are thumbnails from the DPS August package, the ninth since I joined the club.
For those late to the party, script publisher Dramatists Play Service runs a book club, where, once a quarter, they will deliver to your doorstep a box of scripts, curated by an established playwright, brimming with talent and creative life force. I look forward to every shipment as, to put it bluntly, I love reading scripts, even those for plays I know not and may never see brought to life on stage.
August’s package was curated by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Tony and Pulitzer winner (whose “An Octoroon” and “Appropriate” will be part of my NYC acquisition thumbnails). A student of Christopher Durang (who sadly passed away in April of last year), Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins included THREE of Mr. Durang’s plays as well as four other plays with an African-American focus (but sadly, none of his own work). Mr. Durang’s scripts included after-words by the playwright where he discusses each play in detail – some of these after-words are longer than the plays themselves. It’s like Bonus Tracks on a CD or Blu-Ray, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them, as I trust you will too.
THREE PLAYS BY CHRISTOPHER DURANG
To quote our curator, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins:
“This past April, we lost not just one of the great playwrights of our time but also one of our greatest teachers: Christopher Durang. A roll call of his former students is absolutely insane but here’s a sampling: David Lindsay-Abaire, Tanya Barfield, Adam Rapp, Katori Hall, Samuel D. Hunter, Joshua Harmon, Martyna Majok. I am so fortunate to have been among his last cohorts, and when I was approached to curate this box, one of the first things I asked was, ‘How much Christopher Durang can I include?’ Because I have been on a tear since his passing to have people read and/or rediscover this incredible body of work, which is unmatched in its blend of actual funny-ha-ha humor, theatrical invention, and political incisiveness. I wish more people were writing like this today. Actually, I wish I was writing more like this today.”
THE MARRIAGE OF BETTE AND BOO
First Produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Public/Newman Theatre May 16, 1985
Bette and Boo get married but things soon turn from sour almost immediately. Bette suffers a string of miscarriages, leaving only a single son, Matt, who is our narrator through the few ups and many downs of the marriage. They are surrounded by the most eccentric families only Durang could devise, but, even in script form, come across as not so much over-the-top odd as annoyingly embarrassing and off-center. It’s said that this is Durang’s most autobiographical play, especially as he played Matt in the original production, but his after-words downplay this while acknowledging the few similarities (and many differences) between Bette and Boo’s family and his own. The style of this piece is highly theatrical – everyone wears variations of their wedding outfits throughout, and dead characters remain on stage in some of the highly combative family dinner scenes. I remember seeing at least one production of this, but I can’t recall if it were here in Atlanta or back in Pennsylvania, and I remember laughing hysterically the first time I read the script. It holds up beautifully after all these years and is my favorite of these three plays. To quote the script’s back-cover blurb – “The play moves through three decades of divorce, alcoholism, madness, and fatal illness – all treated with a farcical brilliance which, through the author’s unique talent, mines the unlikely lodes of irony and humor residing in these unhappy events.”
BETTY’S SUMMER VACATION
First produced off-Broadway at Playwright’s Horizon, February 19, 1999
This play represents Durang in full find-humor-in-the deepest-darkness-of-the-human-soul mode. Betty just wants to spend a month relaxing on vacation, but is sharing a summer time share with a shy man who may just be a serial killer, a friend who was sexually abused by her father as a child, the friend’s mother who is in denial about the abuse (“She always was a liar”), a toxic hunky guy who wants to f**k everyone everywhere all the time, a homeless flasher who is not shy about sharing his shortcomings, and an audience who lives in the ceiling. It’s this last that elevated this play on first read – it satirizes our 24-hour “Entertain Me” culture with its “Reality Shows” and with our 24-hour “Carnival News” obsessions. I’ve never seen this one, and it presents a portmanteau full of staging challenges, including a cast of characters (Betty aside) who modern audiences would consider cancel-fodder. The humor is not in the dark deeds that happen (and they are legion) but in the blithe acceptance of them as normal and entertainment. You won’t be bored by this one!
MISS WITHERSPOON
First Produced by the McCarter Theatre in Princeton NJ September 2005
McCarter production transferred to Playwrights Horizon NYC November 2005
Atlanta Metro Production at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square January 2007
Have you ever reconsidered an initial negative response to a play? When I saw this in Marietta back in 2007, I hated hated hated it, giving it one of my few completely negative reviews. I thought it gave full approval to a ton of new age garbage that always grates my reason-centers, and thought Durang had really bought into it.
Reading the script this many years later, I see what he was doing with this (his copious post-script notes didn’t hurt), so I’m beginning to suspect that the director of the Marietta production either did not “get” the play, or at best, directed with a skewed sense of its intended tone.
Veronica finds herself in the afterlife and is tasked with reincarnating until she “learns something,” a task she finds abhorrent, to the point that she is able to commit suicide as a newborn infant. In the final analysis, this is not a play about embracing new age tropes and woo, but a play using those tropes to satirize a not-exactly meaningless existence.
To be honest, I had to read this one twice just to be sure I got it wrong all those years ago, and, to give Theatre in the Square the benefit of the doubt, to admit I let my own biases color my reaction to what was actually before my eyes.
INSURRECTION: HOLDING HISTORY
By Robert O’Hara
Originally Produced as an MFA Thesis Columbia University NYC April 1995
World Premiere at the Public Theatre NYC November 1996
Is it ever a good idea to change history? Ron is a contemporary student of history. T.J. is his great-great grandfather, an ex-slave mostly immobile and confined to a wheelchair. In this imaginatively structured piece, playwright O’Hara takes them (and us) on a phantasmagoria, a trip to the past, a chance to change the outcome of Nat Turner’s ill-fated slave rebellion. Through story, poetry, and song, Ron gets a true education about the realities of slavery and T.J. learns that his wish to be “Taken. Home.” is more a nightmare than a pipe dream.
This was an invigorating read and, I daresay, it would be a singular experience to see it live and (appallingly) “in your face.”
THE STORY
By Tracey Scott Wilson
Originally Produced at the Public Theatre NYC December 2003
Atlanta Metro Production at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square May 2006
This is another piece I saw many years ago in Marietta, but this time, I was impressed with the production and with the play. Reading it again now confirms my original esteem, and now, with fact-checking disappearing from the news sources of the majority of Americans, it is even more relevant.
Yvonne is a young black reporter trying to make a name for herself outside the confines of her paper’s “Outlook” (aka “Fluff Piece”) section. When she meets an extraordinary young woman at a community Center, a recent murder with racial overturns threatens to be the rocket fuel for her career. When it is revealed that Yvonne’s own resume may have a few “alternate facts,” it threatens to scuttle the story and the inroads made by others. And when it is revealed that her “Source” was also not exactly truthful, things go from bad to worse to spiteful.
I really think it is time for more productions of this excellent script!
born bad
by debbie tucker green
Originally Produced at Hampstead Theatre London April 2003
First American Production SoHo Rep April 2011 (*)
This one was a little difficult to read, though I suspect it would be a searing experience to see it on stage. A metaphoric game of “musical chairs” is the backbone of this short piece of family dysfunction involving abuse and (possibly) incest. The characters are nameless – Dad, Mum, Dawta, Brother, Sister # 1, and Sister # 2 – and all are tragically damaged, eternally angry, and constantly at war. It raises the perennial question of whether a person is “born bad” or shaped by their trauma and choices. One leaves the script wondering what unspoken harrow was at the root of this family’s story,
What makes this a difficult read is the use of syntax and word choice / word spelling that may be unfamiliar to English-Major trained readers, and some pages had to be reread to get the sense of what was being said.
(*) Ex-Atlanta Actor Crystal Dickinson was in the SoHo Rep production
WHEN I COME TO DIE
By Nathan Lois Jackson
First Produced at Lincoln Center, NYC, February 2011
This was the most vividly compelling of the non-Durang scripts this time. Through some mysterious circumstance, a lethal injection execution doesn’t work, and the inmate is surprised to find himself alive. Through a number of encounters with the prison chaplain, his daughter, and another death row inmate, the survivor, Damon, struggles to come to terms with what his “new life” really means, with the events that led to his choices before prison, and with the nature of survival itself. This is NOT a polemic about the death penalty – you’ll find no arguments either pro or con – but a meditation on what it means to be alive and within a community. It’s especially poignant given that the playwright, Nathan Louis Jackson (a former student if Durang) passed away at the age of 45 in 2023. I’d love to see this one on stage – small cast and minimal set would make it ideal for a black box venue.
I hope you get a chance to check out any (or all) of these plays and hope you find them as satisfying to read as I did. Better yet, I hope they create a desire to see them live on stage!
As usual, thank you for indulging my Bibliowallow! There will be more soon!
-- Brad Rudy (BKRudy@aol.com)
#DramatistsPlayService
https://www.dramatists.com/dps/checkout/bwaybookclub.asp
