Play

Mondrian Static

(Inspiration taken from the poem

Written with the Body, by Joao Cabral de Melo Neto)

A young woman lies on the floor, her feet toward the audience.

A young man enters and regards the audience, a series of painting on the wall.

He regards the woman.

They are dressed for a museum trip.

Philip:

Lovely aren’t they?

Jean:

They are.

Philip:

It took me a long time to come around to them, you know, the Mondrians.

Jean:

Yes, they aren’t normally the first paintings a person gravitates to.

Philip:

Intersecting lines, the boxes of color. The way they draw the eyes to specific points.

Jean:

Lovely.

Philip:

(Looks down at her, and then to the other side of the room)

Do you mind?

Jean:

Please go right ahead.

Philip:

(Steps over her)

Thank you.

Jean:

What made you reconsider them?

Phillip:

(Thinks on this)

Moving to the city did it. I grew up relatively far out in the country where it’s all flat lands and the occasional hill up against the skyline.

Jean:

So you preferred still life then?

Philip:

Not at all. I preferred movement. Movement abounds in even the quietest country landscape. Have you ever seen a breeze blow across a stalk of wheat?

Jean:

I can honestly say I haven’t.

Philip:

Every little bit seems to move in its own direction. It’s beautiful and subtle, and that’s what I was looking for: flow, movement…brushstrokes, which are….

Jean:

Evident in his color boxes.

Philip:

Yes, but it was the lines that drew me. The skyline of a city is all intersections. A new environment opened up an appreciation for his work. (Pause) I found the movement later.

Jean:

That’s beautiful.

Philip:

Thank you. (Pause) I suppose I should ask…

Jean:

Am I ok?

Philip:

Yes.

Jean:

Why ask now?

Philip:

(Shrugs)

I wasn’t so invested when I entered the room, but now after this very nice conversation, I find myself concerned.

Jean:

You’re concern is appreciated. I’m fine. (Pause) My name is Jean, by the way.

Philip:

Mine is Philip.

Jean:

Ha. If we were to end up husband and wife, our married name would be Jean-Philippe. It would be very French.

Philip:

No it wouldn’t.

Jean:

Yes it would. Jean-Philippe is a French name.

Philip:

No, I mean our married name would be some combination of our last names, not our first names.

Jean:

I know. Still.

Philip:

Still what?

Jean:

Mondrian developed this style in Paris.

Philip:

So?

Jean:

It’s just a pretty big coincidence is all I’m saying.

Philip:

You are a deeply weird person.

Jean:

It works for me.

Philip:

Yes it does.

(Pause)

Philip:

So, will somebody be…

Jean:

Yes. Museum security is being mobilized as we speak.

Philip:

You’d think they’d be here by now.

Jean:

No rush. I’m not actually touching any of the art.

Philip:

Your feet are up against the wall there.

Jean:

That’s not part of the art.

Philip:

That’s subjective.

Jean:

Ahhh…clever boy.

Philip:

Do you come to this museum a lot?

Jean:

All the time. It’s where I spend most of my lunch hours.

Philip:

And do you do this a lot?

Jean:

First time.

Philip:

Does it…is it a different perspective? Does it help you see something that I’m not seeing? (He crouches down and looks up at the paintings)

Jean:

I can’t imagine a more sterile, alienating place than a museum. Every exhibit sectioned off, a security perimeter around each piece, a guard whose job it is to ignore the paintings and instead stare at you. Couple after couple speaking in whispers if at all, and that’s if they even take each room at the same pace, most just split up. It’s a solitary experience that thoroughly depresses me.

Philip:

So why are you here…and on the floor?

Jean:

(Pause)

Waiting for a line to intersect with me.

(Long pause. Philip lies down, downstage,

horizontal, with his head on Jean’s ankle.)

Jean:

Thank you.

Philip:

My pleasure.

Jean:

Did you really not care enough to ask about my health when you walked in?

Philip:

No. (Pause) I just assumed it was one of you city people being weird, and I was too intimidated to ask.

Jean:

Fair enough.

Philip:

How long do you think we’ve got?

Jean:

Seconds. I can hear the thunder of rubber soled shoes coming down the hall.

Philip:

Right. (Pause) So, when they get here…will you let me convince them to lie down?

Jean:

My pleasure.

Over.

Mondrian Static by Stephen Gracia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at approachingnoiselessly.blogspot.com.

Manifestos on Bathroom Walls.

Theatre can be many things. It can be spectacle: puppets and costumes and sets and huge casts. It can sprawl across three acts.

It can also be two people talking.

It can be street clothes and bare stages. It can be done in ten minutes. It just needs to be effective; it needs to communicate; it needs to transform.

Spectacle is good; it envelops you and thunders across you; it's arena rock. It's main stage magic.

This isn't that. This is basement theatre. This is dialogue with three chords.

Punks don't do fake Magik.

A Start.

It Begins - National Novel Writing Month

 

So, I've opted to give this a try, a novel about a cursed and rapidly degenerating family line, that is, at its heart, based around a single moment of Lovecraftian horror. The plan is to craft a haunted novel that is pulled together from narrative scraps, moving back and forth in time and ultimately ending beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. 

Let's see if this works out.....

New Poem/A Letter

This is a poem that didn't make it into "Other People in Perfect Cities" due to it not being quite right for a while. I've edited it, and it's still not quite right, particularly in the first stanza, smack in the middle of my ever-present "list of three things." In every way (structurally, thematically, etc) this is a typical Stephen Gracia poem, and that may be why it's lingered in the unusable pile for so long. It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that my voice needs to change as I've begun to bore myself a bit.


A Letter


Someone in my workshop
just discovered Olson,
so now,
every poem is filled
with fishing boats,
the dead & undead
giving full throat to myth,
& threatening,
maximus waves,

despite his having never actually seen an ocean.

The poems are heartless
but structurally perfect,

& it’s not the lack of authenticity I lament;
it’s the ease with which we slip into a voice
we didn’t earn,

as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.


A Letter by Stephen Gracia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License

IF YOU WISH TO REPRINT THIS WORK, YOU MUST CONTACT ME.

First Post/Instructions for Dancing

There is really no good reason for doing this, but then, the same can be said for creating anything, really. Putting up a blog full of your own work is monstrously self obsessed. As is writing a poem, a play, a story and doing anything with it but shoving it in a drawer.

I create...a lot. And I have a lot of full drawers. So, fairly regularly, I will add to this blog, photos, poems, music, fiction, and short plays, and you're welcome to comment. Most everything will be Creative Commons licensed,  so if you want to make use of something on here, just let me know.

I've decided to start with something that differs a bit from what I normally write. It's not bloody or terrible; it's not loaded top to bottom with every conceivable use of the word "fuck". It's sweet, and it's sad, and I'm not entirely sure why I wrote it in the first place.

Instructions for Dancing

By Stephen Gracia

Setting: Bare stage. Single spotlight. If possible, the spotlight

should follow the actor. If not, the spotlight should widen when

he enters the area, and he should, during the performance,

 move in and out of it as he sees fit.

Music: “The Book of Love” by the Magnetic Fields

Robert enters. He is dressed in a pale colored suit,

something suitable for an awful wedding.

He should be disheveled.

He is carrying a bunch of oversized paper shoe soles,

 brightly colored with numbers.

He throws all but one the floor.

Music fades

Robert:

These things are supposed to go in some order…I don’t fucking know…there are colors and numbers…I don’t…whatever….

(He tosses the last one on the floor)

I guess this is how you know you’re an adult. (Steps on one) You put on a suit and pay for lessons that teach you to do something you did naturally as a child. (Steps and steps)  Ok… (he crosses legs and stumbles)  Shit! (Pause) I am so fucking white. (Pause, steps again, his awkward steps become a salsa for five beats until he has to make one huge, awkward leap to a footstep.)

Fucking hopscotch is what I’m doing right now.

(Leaps on one leg from one footstep to the other)

Learning to dance at 37 seems kind of pathetic, but I’ve heard of people learning to swim, bike, drive even, at my age or older. You can’t learn everything in your first 30 years, and then between 30 and 35, you think “What’s the point? I’m too old now.” Then, once you start making your way to 40, you think, “Shit. 30 wasn’t so old, 40’s OLD, I need to get to learning this stuff right away.” 

(Steps forward, back, forward, and to the left.)

This, though, is something I should have learned before my knees started giving me shit.

(Right, left, forward, left)

Old man, old man, what are you doing?

(Right, left, forward, left)

People always tell you, “Just get out there and dance! No one is paying any attention to YOU!” That’s bullshit. All eyes are on the uncoordinated slob, even if he’s nowhere near the center of the dance floor, even if he’s hovering on the edge of the crowd…in the back…where the light’s particularly bad.

Your best bet is to stand by the bar, cloak yourself in disaffected coolness, like camouflage netting, like a defense mechanism.

 I was a kid in the eighties, you can’t fool me. Bad dancing’ll get you knifed.

(John Travolta, circa Saturday Night Fever)

Ok, maybe not, but still, it’s embarrassing.

When I was a kid, at school dances, I was what you’d call a “wallflower”. Well, if you were 70 you’d call me that. Also, if I was a girl. Do wallflowers have to be girls? Not very manly to call a shy and awkward boy a flower. Kind of exacerbates the situation….

(Pirouettes)

Anyway….

(Demi-pointe)

…I was one of those kinds of kids you know? Too cool to dance, baby. We would stand in the corner together, powder blue 80’s sport jackets swept back, hands jammed in our pockets, talking about sneaking out for a smoke.

(Back, forward, back, forward, left, right, left)

None of us actually smoked. But we said it loud enough for the girls to hear, you can believe that.

(Back, forward, back, forward, left, right, left)

That’s when I should have started, you know? If I’d walked across the gym, and asked Anne-Marie Fitzgerald to dance, my whole life might have been different. Anne-Marie with her dark hair, and her sharp goddamn sarcasm. (Pause) Sarcasm is so hot to a junior high schooler. Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s all about who develops a chest first, it’s about who develops the ability to deliver a withering one-liner. I might not have spent the last two decades at weddings, at empty tables, watching everyone else having fun, if only I’d walked up to Anne-Marie and asked her to dance, but instead I stood in the corner, and acted like dancing was beneath me. 

(Does the Hustle)

Yeah!

Anne and I stayed friends though. Childhood crushes are bullshit and a dime a dozen, but having a friend that you’ve kept since third grade? That’s a rare thing. I’d do anything for her, so when she said, Charlie, you need to learn how to dance, you need to dance at my wedding, I said yes.

(Waltzes)

1,2,3…1,2,3…

Does anyone waltz anymore?

(Stops and stands)

She’s going to be a beautiful bride you know? She’s got this glow, and this smile that just…(Pause)…she’s got great taste in friends too, so I know the wedding will be fun, no matter how terrible my dancing is, how traumatic it ends up being. (Pause)

She’s the one that introduced me to Claire. (Pause)

Claire died while we were planning our wedding. Almost two years ago now. I intended to learn how to dance for that. To dance to a ballad, I swear to god, knowing Claire, probably something by REO Speedwagon. Claire wasn’t much of a dancer either, but she enjoyed it, the energy of it, she was unschooled, and uncoordinated, and utterly fearless about it. I let her have that part of her life with her friends. Together, we were more of the go to the movies, go to museums, go to the bar type of couple. Those were our types of together fun. (Pause) And, on the rare occasions, I was forced to dance, (he mimes holding his hands around her waist and sways from side to side, I’d do this thing. The uncoordinated shuffle. (Pause) But for the wedding, I did the research, I found the right instructor, and I knew what I wanted to learn. I needed someone to teach me to be fearless. To teach me what came to Claire naturally…

(Stops swaying)

I missed my window here; I missed my chance for it to be special; now I’ve spent $300 dollars to be dragged onto the floor for the timewarp at someone else’s goddamn wedding because Anne thinks “It’s about time I get out there and start having fun again.”

(Holds his hands in position)

You can’t have fun “again”, you know.

(Begins to waltz again)

It’s not something you can revive and continue on with. You need to start over completely, from a different position.

(Continues waltzing)

You need to invent new ways to have fun, because the old ways are just too horrible to revisit.

(The spotlight narrows.)

(Lights Out)

Instructions for Dancing by Stephen Gracia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License

IF YOU WISH TO PERFORM THIS WORK, YOU MUST CONTACT ME.