Image from Wikimedia
.jpg){kind=link}
When you are born your work is placed in your heart.
– Kahlil Gibran
Don’t die with your music still in you. Don’t die with your purpose unfulfilled. Don’t die feeling as if your life has been wrong. Don’t let that happen to you.
– Wayne Dyer
I want to know if you can live with failure … and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
– Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation
Is there room in your heart to share what’s been taken from you?
– Jerold London, Last Dime in NY, NY
TIME AND PLACE
2024. Friday evening.
A party in a Manhattanville apartment with a small balcony.
CHARACTERS
GRACE, female actor.
BROOKLYN, female actor.
CLIFFORD, male actor, tall, father of a kidnapped daughter.
LYDIA, female guest, not an actor, who wanders on her own about the room, looking at books, pictures, etc., occasionally addressing the audience. If anyone has silvery purple hair cut short on one side and long on the other, it’s LYDIA.
SCENE – FRIDAY EVENING
All of the guests are either in the main room of Kathryn’s and Lori’s seventh floor Manhattanville apartment, in its kitchen (where pizza, beer and wine are available), or on its small balcony.
KATHRYN and LORI welcome guests at the front door as they arrive.
Guests move about the room, standing in small groups chatting. Most have plastic plates for their slices of pizza, and/or a drink in hand. Occasional sounds of passing sirens may be heard in the distance.
Through appropriate lighting/miking techniques, fragments of conversations are highlighted to the audience. Other conversations subside into background sound. When LYDIA speaks, action near her comes to a halt.
As GRACE and BROOKLYN are talking, LYDIA enters from the balcony. A soft spotlight follows her throughout – going full when she speaks to the audience.
GRACE
They’re closing Lempicka, did you hear?
Three Tony nominations, and still the show fails. Why is that?
BROOKLYN
Let’s not say it’s because support for gay rights is waning.
GRACE
More likely interest in Art Deco is waning.
Or New York’s not as woke as it would like to think.
BROOKLYN
Or getting too expensive for its britches.
GRACE
[beat] O no!
Here comes King Lear.
He just caught my eye, when I wasn’t looking.
BROOKLYN
Who?
GRACE
Clifford. The tall guy. Heading this way.
He’s never been the same since his daughter got kidnapped.
BROOKLYN
She was?
GRACE
He and his wife separated.
They couldn’t stand the memories together. He’s a total ….
CLIFFORD comes up to them.
GRACE
Hello, Clifford.
CLIFFORD
Evening, Grace.
GRACE
This is my friend, Brooklyn.
Brooklyn, this is Clifford.
CLIFFORD
Extending his right hand.
[to BROOKLYN] My pleasure, Brooklyn.
BROOKLYN
Shanking his hand.
Nice to meet you, Clifford.
CLIFFORD
Call me Cliff…. What do you think of the party?… Thus far.
BROOKLYN
Pizza’s good. Sesame seeds. And the wine.
CLIFFORD
Agreed….
Except it’s pale ale for me. [showing]
BROOKLYN
What do you do … in theater?
CLIFFORD
Explore.
BROOKLYN
Explore what, exactly?
CLIFFORD
New things to do.
Sound. Air.
Attuning myself to its inner vibrations in the universe.
BROOKLYN
Am I supposed to understand that?
CLIFFORD
Life is a dance. Theatre is a dance.
It vibrates to the rhythms of a greater world.
Unless we can understand that, we can understand nothing.
How life is given, and taken away, at random.
Because life’s a cycle. Coming and going.
Reincarnation is a cycle.
BROOKLYN
You believe in reincarnation?
CLIFFORD
I have to.
GRACE
Ut oh, I think I need to refresh my drink.
GRACE finishes her drink and exits into the kitchen.