Two writers discuss issues of the past and write and edit a play at the same time.
A Season's Fate
Lisa Parsons
Playwright
Cast
Alice An artist with literary talents
Matt A fat, bloated writer who eats junk
food and lives in a restaraunt
SET A darkened room with a table, two chairs,
and an antique candelbra with 3 white
tapers
AT RISE Matt is seated at the table,
and Alice walks in with a
cigar and black stockings
and garter belt.
ALICE
What time is it? I'm too busy to
talk with you now.
MATT
I'm wasting your time, is that
what this is all about.
ALICE
Oh, get off my back. You
just can't get it up and you're
bitchin.
MATT
I don't believe you when you
say you never slept with any
of your professors in graduate
school
ALICE
I thought they were disgusting.
They just wanted to get their
rocks off. I refused...
MATT
So now you're making up for the
past.
ALICE
Come and get it baby.
MATT
Oh, my prostrate is acting up
ALICE
But, seriously I complained about
most of them.
MATT
Then you got a reputation for being
bad, good girl.
ALICE
Tell me about it. I started by
complaning about a prof in the
art history department to a
staff member. She told me to
be quiet before I got a
reputation for being a trouble
maker.
MATT
So, no satisfaction there.
ALICE
That's right.
MATT
What happened next.
ALICE
I argued all of the time with
a female anthropology prof
and then during the last class
I told her that her research stank
and that the entire field was
wothless.
MATT
Go on.
ALICE
She was interested in the subject
of death in the Breton area of France.
MATT
That sounds right down your
alley. Haven't your last two
plays been about death.
ALICE
Yes. Something must have
rubbed off on me.
MATT
You mean insanity.
ALICE
About expulsion from the garden.
MATT
Tell me about it.
ALICE
It's falling in love or is it lust.
MATT
Do you want a critque.
ALICE
I'll print it out tonight.
MATT
Fine
ALICE
Back to the garden. Next sin
had to do with an eccentric
Russian prof. I started having
visions and began to communicate
with him telepathically.
MATT
Visions. Never had one, but
wish I had.
ALICE
This went way beyond anything
I had ever known. He was a
mystic. It wasn't surprising.
MATT
A poet of sorts.
ALICE
You dare speak of poetry.
MATT
I write some, you know that.
ALICE
Whitman, love, Billy Collins.
MATT
Just a minute.
ALICE
Oh, you and Billy.
MATT
Leave him out of this.
ALICE
I'm more into mysticism.
MATT
You want to be the Madame
Blad .of the 21 st century.
ALICE
But you're into the afterlife.
So, what's it to you.
MATT
I'd leave this part out of the
script.
ALICE
Your afterlife plays, disgusting.
MATT
Don't.
ALICE
I'll just tickle you with a page
of your script.
MATT
Get back to your piece.
ALICE
Ok. I had communicationw with
the New York Times and had
visions in the night before
things that came up in the rag.
MATT
Fun.Great deal.
ALICE
All right now.
MATT
Be careful about this kind of
stuff. It's not good for the
narrative.
ALICE
It did happen. Many times.
MATT
So.
ALICE
Happened with a late great
art historian and curator.
MATT
No that sounds sexy.
ALICE
He'd say blatant and erotic
things during his lectures.
MATT
I do that in my classes.
ALICE
I started to think about him all
the time. He'd bring up our
night time conversations the
next day in class.
MATT
I've never done that. But,
I do it to...
ALICE
I need to stick to the script.
MATT
Oh, strike that out.
ALICE
He also made comments about
my eating too many beans and
being a dog.
MATT
Class clown.
ALICE
Later, a staff member told me
that she couldn't say that
NYU ran me out of town
the year before.
MATT
Leave that part in.
ALICE
The paper I wrote about the
Italian Communist Party.
MATT
That's new to me.
ALICE
For the anthropology prof.
MATT
What that again.
ALICE
Another case was my Latin American
history teacher. He told me to go
to the Cuban Studies Center on 28th
street and Broadway and bleed them.
MATT
Another idiot savante.
ALICE
I showed him some notes for
a paper about violence against
women in Latin America, and then
he pinned a one page memo on
the bulletin board of the history
department.
MATT
What did it say.
ALICE
Aimed at prof's who made
sexual remarks.
MATT
I'm hooked.
ALICE
He did give me an A on my term
paper about Latin American
women artists.
MATT
Bravo.
ALICE
He did get under my skin
for awhile.
MATT
I don't know. I would have
harbored feelings of hate.
AICE
How do you see the set and
actors...
MATT
A very minimal set, of course.
Two comfy chairs and a small
table made of blood red
painted steel. A couple of
coffee cups.. Maybe a tea
pot.
ALICE
Lighting should be mysterious
and selectively lit from behind.
Shakespeare’s tragic love story ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ is putt on a fair way as two lovers go for the green together only to be frustrated by the sands of time.
