VERSION 1: DEATH OF THE DOLL – Theatrical solo show
(Thesis project at New World School of the Arts Conservatory)
Opens on “Maria”, a stripper, late 30’s whose young son has just given her an ultimatum of quitting that night or running away forever. After being grilled by a reporter, she escapes to her dressing room where our interview reveals her humorous yet tough philosophy on the underground strip world, making men cry, why she hates wives and the justifications of her lifestyle. As Maria struggles to make her final decision, her violent past is unearthed, uncovering a crime recently committed against a fellow stripper that has pushed her son over the edge.
MARIA – (Takes out a razor and cuts the hair she has missed on her legs) One time while I was reaching the ultimate part in my groove bit, I caught IT. The IT. The ultimate IT. The wedding night in one of their eyes. I mean I saw this guy, he looked like an accountant or something. I’m usually pretty good at spotting what they do. He was in his fifties, but I saw him young with a blond, his wife and he had his hand up her dress and he told her that he’d never want to see anyone that way but her. I’ve never felt dirty up there. But that was too good, too dirty, too good for me. But I grooved and grooved, twisted harder, then so soft, just for him. He had to leave, run out crying like his wife the other night…I imagine. Yeah…yeah, it’s looking hot tonight.
( Begins to file her nails) I was checkin’ out the room tonight, it was strange imagining my son sitting there watching me. In my world. If he were to run out there and try to stop me. With the rest of the sickos, the hungry, the unfed, the lost. Some part of me was finally there with all that scum. It’s quiet tonight for the first time. It’s never really quiet, I mean the music is always going but with all this noise it’s quiet. And Trixy was out there making her table rounds and she’s an amateur but she makes a fuckin’ living. She’s got this move where she kicks her heel up on the table. And I’m lookin’ at all this and it all seemed to slow down. And it was loud too, cause I could hear what I was thinkin’. And what I didn’t say and what you’re thinkin’. And what that reporter is writing about me right now. It’s quiet the way that lighting is quiet sometimes. The kind of quiet that I only found when Joshua was about eight months old. He’d wake up crying in the middle of the night, me on two hours of sleep after dancing. Crawling my way to him, like he’d crawl to me. The weight of his tiny body depending just on me, no matter what I’d done, like he was back inside of me, his last whimpers calming down. And then just his breath against me. Rocking back and forth, I could have slept in that quiet forever…
Solo
BLOOD BITS (full length)- participated as an excerpt workshop reading at New World Conservatory with Edward Albee at the Louis O Gerrits Theatre.
Sonia a twenty seven year old escort prostitute attempts to celebrate the engagement of a fellow co-worker Joni to an old dying rich client. They enter into a revealing moral debate on their profession, the false escape of Joni’s marriage and the danger Sonia leads to in reuniting with the married man she has been running from. When Sonia finally meets up with her lost destructive love in a motel room, she has to face up to who she has let herself become.
JONI- I have no intentions of forgetting who the hell I am. I can’t control that…but money…. Money the beautiful thing about it, the only beautiful thing about it is that it can make you anything. And everyone wants to believe you.
SONIA- You believe what you just said?
——-
SONIA- It’s not something I’d know when. Or you’d know. It’s something that you sense after a date. Oh, I mean when you see the shine of the limo coming. And you can imagine your own leg stepping out of that machine. Like what’s coming next? Where’s the body? And you’re walking next to another body into some Ritz place. His arm around your arm. The door man thinking you’re a goddess. And the body soon to be a fuck knows what the door man is thinking.
——
LARRY- Sonia…I just like saying your name…and um…my life I saw was a track and I was the train, everybody is a train I guess….and ummm…well you make certain stops and I’m saying to you right now that I mistook you for a stop even after you held my hand that way. And eventually there went your cigarette up to your wet lips, squinting looking into nothing. And then I’d wake up alone. (His hand falling and she breathes again.) With no more tracks to run through.
3 characters
THREE- BIT HOODS (one act)- Received a reading at Third Street Black Box in Miami, Florida.
Mia in her late twenties is married to mafia goon Johnny who promises to get them out of their Chicago hide out apartment by finishing one last job. Suzanne their criminal neighbor pushes Mia to leave the apartment with her on a dangerous cinema outing; forcing Mia to reexamine the life she has chosen for herself and if she’s not just better off tackling the world alone without Johnny.
SUZANNE – I don’t blame him, not wanting to leave Chicago.
MIA – Well I don’t blame her and she still has Mickey and Joe to take care of. We were looking out the window one night, you know they have a great view of the city from their apartment there. And you just sit back and look, it’s not even looking the city seems so big. I’m sitting there trying to take it all in. So Rosa is saying how the city is like a living breathing thing. It can give and take. The more I saw it’s movement and how every light must be someone. It makes you wonder what’s going on in there. And so I’m looking out and I realize there is so much more out there then I imagined. So then the sounds go along with the view so well and it’s a whole world for the taking. I’m here closed in but I really don’t have to be.
3 characters
WATER LOCKED BETWEEN US (one act)- Sarah a twenty eight yr old good girl gets intoxicated at dock tiki bar to find her navy boy finance has left her. As Lole the restaurant owner tries to console her to go home, an attractive twenty three yr old sailor Lane comes in looking to score and win a bet with the guys on the ship. Predator and prey ensue in a revealing battle of vulnerable desperation that have led both of them to this turning point that could change their lives forever.
SARAH- I’ve been through that maze in my own head. And I’ve been able to talk to a little girl I know. Not even knowing me. She asked me why I had so much lipstick on? And I said for protection. Why my nails were shinny? Why I crossed my legs that way? Why I was so quiet? She wasn’t very afraid. It was so silly having two rods of heat trying to hug you. She wanted me to come with her. Could I ever be her mother? Her mama pulled her to go towards the door and she was gone.
_________
SARAH- Suzie was young?
LANE- Thirteen.
SARAH- You?
LANE- Fourteen.
SARAH- Where?
LANE- Behind a tree. It’s funny I don’t remember where I met her. Just where I ended her, or where she ended me. The sweetest golden blonde you ever did see. She let me cut off a piece. And I’d carry it everywhere in a small bag I made. And when I climbed a tree that was really hard to climb, I’d open my small bag and let one of her hairs fly away. She told me she wouldn’t let me cut anymore of her hair if I was just going to give it to the wind. She had agreed to let me cut her hair this day. Walking to her tree house in my mind I was blinded by her yellow, yellow hair. Waiting for it. So was Jack Handler. He stood there very still holding her hair that he cut off. She didn’t look at me, she just closed his fingers down to his palm to keep her hair in his hands. I climbed such a tall tree and let out all the hair so I could see a yellow line let out into the day. Bitch.
3 characters