George Saulnier
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Here We Go.....

11/30/2017

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Mulatto
Hey there! I’m finally working on my blog. That’s because I finally read a play. I’m in San Francisco working on Uncle Vanya and I have a fair amount of time with not a lot to do. So I’m reading and I just read a doozie of a play by Langston Hughes called Mulatto. Whoa.
The play is intense. It borders on melodrama but it has a verisimilitude that lifts it above that. The writing is visceral and immediate. A rough outline of the events is simple. A white plantation, owner, Thomas Norwood, has fathered 5 mulatto children with his housekeeper, Cora. One died in childbirth; one, William, the darkest, has become a field hand and behaves like the other blacks on the plantation; two daughters, Sallie and Bertha, both who are light skinned, although Sallie is the only one who appears in the play; and finally Robert or Bert, who resembles his father both in looks and temperament. Sallie is being sent off to school where Bert has recently returned from. She leave early in the first act. After she leaves, Norwood is visited by another white man, Fred Higgins, who does yeoman’s work giving a hefty amount of exposition.
From him, we learn that Bert was involved in a altercation in town where he spoke back to a white woman. Bert is “uppity” and does not know his place. The problem though, is that Bert knows that Norwood is his father and wishes to be acknowledged as his son and heir. He wishes to be treated like and recognized for his white parentage. Nothing doing in this world. He and Norwood argue and it ends with Norwood dying at Bert’s hand. He is then pursued by a lynch mob. Cora has some moving monologues about her plight and Bert returns home to find some measure of redemption by taking his own life in his ancestral home, coming in the front door like a man.
The play really worked on me. The relentlessness of the story, the harshness of the language, the inevitability of the plot, and the resoluteness of the characters, all worked together to drive the tragedy forward. The language used is positively brutal. Every imaginable racial slur is used by nearly everyone throughout the course of the play. My modern ears were burning. Also the black characters are all written in “dialect” as was common in the 30’s, with the exception of the educated Bert. Although the play takes place after the Civil War and slavery's “end”, the social structure on this plantation retains most of the features of the antebellum south.
This play has a standout role for an African-american woman in her 40’s in Cora, not something you can say about many plays. She seems a weak character at first but in act two has some demanding and potent monologues. Like The Crucible, the audience wishes desperately that there was some way for the characters to see each other’s point of view, but time and custom have forged their paths so completely and thoroughly that there are no options for these characters to behave other than they do. Were they to, the audience would suffer a betrayal that would render the play trivial and stupid. By sticking to the truth of the events, time, and characters, the play moves out of melodrama and into something approaching a forceful tragedy. I would very much like to see this play produced.
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My god! Has it really been a year?!

10/1/2017

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Wow. I have put this off. Sorry to anyone who cares. I am going to start again. This time I will limit my goals to more modest ones. I will do a maximum of two plays a week and a minimum of one. When I meet those goals with more ease, I will increase to three a week. I enjoy doing this and I hope whoever reads them finds them remotely interesting. So... to begin again...
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Experimental German Play From the 60's 

8/1/2016

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This is not so much a play as a poetically polemical piece for theatre. It is called Self-Accusation by Peter Handke. I have read some other work of Mr. Handke. He is very experimental and German and language obsessed. His pieces often involve careful use of words. I wonder how they work in their original language.
It has a special kind of performance designation called Sprechstuck. It is designed to be spoken by one man and one woman. There are no characters. Each performer stands at a microphone and speaks either alone or in unison, quietly or loudly. The entire text is to be spoken. As there is no set delineation as to who speaks what lines, so each production will be different. Thus, there is freedom in interpreting the gender associations of the text.
The text is roughly ten pages. It is comprised of several loosely related paragraphs each filled with statements. Some are contradictory. Examples are things like: I came into the world. I became. I was begotten. I originated. I grew. Those are in the first group. Then later there are things like: I played. I misplayed. I played according to rules which, according to existing rules, were against convention.
There is a rough development in the text which begins with the imagined thoughts of and infant and develop greater complexity and meaning as the piece moves forward. Given that the performance space is meant to be bare and without ornamentation, I wonder if the performers could just read the text after deciding to how to best assign the lines to each other.
I like this piece. It requires some thought and effort to get meaning from it. It is also extremely flexible in meaning and yet at the same time fairly fixed. It is a complex piece in its intention and yet simple in it’s execution. I think I would like to try to produce it.   
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I'm in This One

7/30/2016

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I feel a little uncomfortable writing about this play because it is a new work and unpublished. However it is a play, I have read it and I will actually be appearing in it in September, so… damn the torpedoes.

The play is a very short one act, almost a sketch, called Once Upon a Mattress Store . It is very funny. There is a mattress store with a bluff, quirky salesman who is about to close the store when a final customer turns out to be a hapless thief. He would like to rob the store, but, alas, there is no money as it has been deposited already,

Very funny dialogue ensues and a cute twist ending completes it. I don’t want to give it away because I hope some of my friends who might read this will come and see it. ​

It’s cute and very entertaining.
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Early America Seems Familiar

7/16/2016

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Back after battling depression. Today’s play is The Poor of New York by Dion Boucicault from a book called American Melodrama which features four plays from the mid to late 1800’s that were written by and popular with Americans then. The play certainly qualifies as a melodrama, defined by Merriam-Webster as “a drama in which many exciting events happen and the characters have very strong or exaggerated emotions”

​The plot is fairly simple: an evil man takes advantage of a virtuous family. There is however a bit more going on in this play and as a result it is more interesting than its basic plot would suggest. Gideon Bloodgood is the evil man, in this case he is a corrupt banker who is about to abscond with the bank’s remaining assets as his investments have failed. He is interrupted in his plans by his wiley clerk Badger who has rightly surmised Bloodgood’s plot. Just as Badger suggests blackmail, a sea captain, Captain Fairweather, shows up with, not only a great name for his job, but with $100,000 that he would like Bloodgood to safeguard for his family while he is away on his next voyage.

So Bloodgood can now run away with Captain Fairweather’s money as well or just use it to save his failing bank. Badger now has more ammuntion to work his blackmail scheme and, as they come to terms, Capt. Fairweather shows ups to get his money back after hearing that Bloodgood is not as trustworthy as he first had heard. A fight ensues and Fairweather is killed. Bloodgood and Badger dispose of his body after which Bloodgood gives Badger money to be silent. Badger moves out west and Bloodgood is saved from financial ruin. Thus ends Act 1.

in Act II we meet our heroes: the Fairweather family, Mrs. Fairweather, the Captain’s widow, son Paul, and daughter Lucy; Mark Livingstone; and, finally the Puffy family, Puffy, Mrs. Puffy, and son Dan. Twenty years have passed. Livingstone is a member of the “new poor” having lost his fortune in the recent wave of bank failures. He has been force to shun his former posh society because of his poverty. He meets the Fairweather’s who have been hiding from society since their father was found dead and apparently robbed of the family’s fortune. In the interim, the Fairweather’s have been living with their faithful servants, The Puffy’s. Livingstone had once been engaged to Lucy but when she and her family were disgraced into poverty, that plan was abandoned. Now that both are poor again the romance rekindles.

Livingstone attempts to get a loan from Bloodgood who has become even more wealthy in the intervening years, Bloodgood’s daughter, Alida is in love with Livingstone and also, mistakenly believing him to be still wealthy and connected, thinks he will get her into the upper society of New York where she longs to be. This causes a rift in the romance of Lucy with both agreeing to not wed to save the other from disgrace. Badger shows up to continue blackmailing Bloodgood. The play ends with Bloodgood starting a fire in the tenement housing of our heores to destroy an incriminating letter. Bloodgood is arrested by Badger who turns out to be a long term undercover cop. Good wins, evill is punished and all is right in the world.

The things that strike me most about the play and why I find it interesting are threefold. The first is the character of Badger; second is the odd class structure; and third is the Bloodgood family and its veiled antisemitism. Despite the terrible reveal at the finale, that Badger is a policeman on a longterm assignment to entrap an evil banker, throughout the play Badger is fascinatingly amoral and charming. The revelation of his true nature is so fleeting and forced that one has no sense of it and, in hindsight, still thinks of him as an appealing rogue.

The class structure of the play is strange. Livingstone and the Fairweathers are poor but not truly proletariat and therefore deserving of more pity because of their previous high class status, Livingstone delivers a speech in which he laments losing wealth and station because there is more humiliation in having become poor that being born to it. He envies the Puffy’s, who are hardy working class folks, unpretentious and kind. Out of pity and duty, they care for their former patrons, the Faiweather’s,knowing that, as genteel people, the Fairweather’s lack the fortitude to bear their hardships unaided.
Bloodgood is an odd and obvious villian. A widower, he is driven to his misdeeds, mostly out of a blind passion to see his daughter become patrician. His daughter is a spoiled voluptuary. While not overtly Jewish, there are some indications that, despite being freakishly wealthy, access to acceptance by the patrician class is somehow denied to him, in a way that the Fairweathers and Livingstone would never be. The Puffy’s, the noble poor, do not harbor such aspirations and, knowing their place, are heroic. The ending is sudden and perfunctory and as mentioned before, trivializes one of the more interesting characters.

I like the play over all. I think because it is sincere in its support of the social hierarchy, it would be effective as satire.


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The 50's Can Be Dull

3/14/2016

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I love collecting books of plays. Sometimes I find ones that are really cheesy and hard to resist. This play comes from just such a book. It's called Prize Plays for Teenagers: 24 outstanding one-act royalty-free plays for all occasions by Helen Louise Miller, It was published in 1956 and it is very much of its time. The plays are very short, more like sketches or skits, but they are called plays and as such I am going to read them and write about them. Not all at once though. I'll be sprinkling one here and there in among the other plays, I think it will be good to have a short play to do, keep the blog active, keep my hand in.


The first play is under the heading General Comedies and is called Beany's Private Eye. The play begins with Mrs. Reynolds typing when her eldest adult child Stephanie enters, exasperated. Beany, her teenage brother has been following her around town with his friend Wacky. He has been tailing her as part of his new found fascination with becoming a detective. Mr's. Reynolds defends Beany but agrees to talk to him about his antics.Stephanie goes upstairs to prepare for the arrival of Digby her boyfriend, but not before complaining of her worries regarding Digby's flagging attentions. Perhaps he's seeing someone else.


Daisy, the maid, comes in to help Mrs. Reynolds get her typing upstairs. A relative comes to visit to complain of Beany staking out their house. Mr's Reynolds is now determined to speak to her son. She and Daisy leave the stage empty. Beany and Wacky now enter and plan more of their Detective training. Beany is going to get Digby's fingerprints by putting a fingerprint powder on the gumdrop jar,. Wacky is going to practice disguises by wearing a mask and confronting Beany's brother, Chalky. Who names their kids Beany and Chalky?


Wackty frightens Daisy and runs away. Beany is told to get rid of the detective shenanigans. Mr. Reynolds shows up with a new client, Mr Bolton. Mr Bolton turns out to be the father of Sally, a girl with whom Beany is smitten. Mr. Bolton goes for the gumdrops, getting fingerprint power all over his hands and face. Beany is going to get in trouble. Digby arrives but has to break his date with Stephanie. She proceeds to dump him. Beeny intervenes to explain why Digby has been breaking dates. Beany has been tailing him as part of his detective training and knows digby has been moonlighting to save for an engagement ring.


Mr Bolton is also Digby's boss. He is impressed with Digby's work ethic and gives him a raise. The police enter with Wacky. Using his mask and some dumb luck he has foiled an attempt to steal Mr. Reynolds car, Beany gives Wacky the detective kit because he was recently asked by Sally to grow up and stop playing detective. All ends well.


Not much to say about this one. Painless, pleasure-less, reads like a Disney sitcom but with less edge. Just silly less than fun, Might be fun for young teenagers to act, Very bland. More of these to come. I think i'd like to do these way over the top with improv, sketch actors and just mock the hell out of them.
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The 60's Can Be Embarrassing 

3/11/2016

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OK. This was a tough one. I've mentioned it on Facebook because it had some terrible stage directions that compelled me to comment on them. Wow. The play is called The White Whore and the Bit Player by Tom Eyen. It's from a collection of plays from 1968, called New American Plays 2, edited by one William M. Hoffman. The play was originally performed at La Mama in Brooklyn in 1964.


I found this play very difficult to read. It is very short but still, very little of it is compelling. The play is meant to be very experimental. Perhaps in its day, it was, but, reading it today, one feels the playwright never met a cliché he didn't like. And yet, I wanted to give him a pass, because I feel that he was probably creating the clichés, rather than using them as crutches. I mean the play was written in 1964. The embarrassing, pretentious, and often silly antics by today's standards were considered dangerous, boundary-pushing innovations then. They were new and exciting, not trite and old hat. I tried to take that into account as I read the play.


There are two actors both playing different manifestations of one character: an actress in an insane asylum. They are referred to in the script as The Nun and The Whore. They are never spoken to by these names but we know The Nun is a nun because she is dressed as one. The actress represented by these two actors is about to kill herself. The Nun and The Whore relive the events of the actress' life as they flash before her in her final moments.


The script is non-linear and self referential. A narrative emerges that the actress was abandoned by her father, lost her mother to suicide, was raised for a time in an abusive convent, was married and abandoned by her husband, became a sexual object for a multitude of men, parlayed her sexual prowess into a film career, became too old to continue, and was committed to this asylum where she finds death the only way to ease her suffering. That sounds so much more coherent and interesting than it does in the text. The set is simple, a bed, some chairs, and a human-sized neon cross.


The two actors trade persona's each playing the actress and the world interacting with her. There are a lot of lines that would be difficult to pull off, like, “I am woman/ all women to all men/ my succulent breasts hanging free/ suspended/ waiting eternally for milk-hungry mankind.” and “Rock? R as in rip? O as is out? C as in clit? K as in knooky-knooky?”. To make matters worse there are appalling stage directions like “[going into heat]”, “[rising like a horny volcano]”, and “[she progresses to cross the the stage like a dancing cannibal...]” among others.


I made a lot of excuses for this play. Ultimately, I think it has some power and resonance in its story but its stage conventions are not so stage worthy any longer. I think there could be a way to make the text work but one would have to scrap a lot of the staging. The corny language and dialogue requires that you find two incredibly skilled actresses each possessing tremendous amounts if charisma. The high level of intensity that is demanded by the script make it a difficult read, It is a loud, emotional piece, meant to be played with irrational, forceful energy. If you could find the right energy in performance you could pull this off on stage.


The trouble is whether its even worth it, The message is confusing. While seeming to write sympathetically about a female experience of the world, the male writer does not draw conclusions that make sense in 2016. Society's expectations of women have changed, as have their expectations of themselves. If one were to be doing just a character piece about one actress, then the archetypal elements of the script interfere. I found this one to be something of a cypher. 
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A Modern Twist

3/4/2016

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This must be my lucky month because I was just asked to audition for another play. It is called Peribanez by Lope De Vega, translated and adapted by Tanya Ronder in 2003. Lope de Vega was a Spanish playwright of Spain's Golden Age. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare and Marlowe and outlived them both, He was freakishly prolific authoring some 2000 plays of which 500 or so survive. He also wrote novels and poetry.

The story is relatively simple and direct, not crowded with comic subplots, as many a Renaissance drama is. That is not to say it is without humor. There's some very funny stuff. It just is more integrated into the work as a whole. Peribanez and Casilda are a newly married couple, so in love with each other it's kinda gross. On their wedding day a bull goes mad, gores a horse and then injures the feudal lord, the Commander. He is brought to Peribanez's house unconscious, possibly dead. Peribanez (also called Pedro) rushes out to get a doctor. In his absence, the Commander awakes to the entreaties of Casilda. He falls into an all consuming love/lust for her.

The Commander then plots some ways to woo Casilda: he give her husband mules and her jewelry; he secretly has her portrait painted; he sends has lackey to woo her cousin. Meanwhile, Pedro is sent to Toledo to get a statue refurbished and sees the portrait. He gets jealous. While Pedro's away, the Commander takes the opportunity to seduce Casilda, only to discover that she is fanatically in love with Peribanez and will not be moved.
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Pedro returns, wracked by jealousy and guilt, and discovers his wife to be faithful. He rewards his wife with renewed vows of love. The Commander, now enraged and more than determined to have his way with Casilda, plots to send Perdo off to war as captain of a contingent of peasants. With the husband out of the town he returns to Casilda. Pedro however has suspected this. Armed with a sword and a newly gifted knighthood, he returns from the war in secret and hides himself in Casilda's chambers.

The Commander comes in and proceeds to rape Casilda. Pedro reveals himself after an unaccountable hesitation and kills the Commander, his servant, and Casilda's cousin who abetted the invasion. Peribanez and Casilda flee. The Commander, soon to die, condemns himself and exonerates Pedro, before dying in the arms of his lieutenant.

The lieutenant goes to the King who is looking over his assembled army (needed to drive the Arabs and Moors from Spain), of which Pedro and the Commander were to be part. He explains the Commander's absence due to death for which Pedro must be executed. A search is made for him. Pedro turns himself in and explains why he did what he did. The King, and Queen, are sympathetic, forgive Pedro, and give him command of the entire regiment. Casilda, who has been silent since her near rape is taken under the Queen's protection.

There is a final scene in which  Casilda disrobes for Pedro, but only to put her newfound finery. There is a deep and palpable sense that the love they once shared, that was so intense it was nearly comical, has been compromised and lost. End of play.
​

I liked this play. I would very much like to read another adaptation. This one seemed a trifle modern textually modern. There are nods and hints at what must have been a very heightened speech in the spanish. I imagine this might be what reading Shakespeare in a modern adaptation into another language must be like,. Structurally it decidedly part of its time. The characters are all tropes from the Renaissance theatre, and the soliloquy is much in evidence.

I am curious if the last scene is in the original Lope de Vega. It definitely has a more modern feel to the end. Traditionally, with the marriage saved and wrongs righted the play's ending would be deemed happy. The tinge of loss that haunts that last scene is an excellent addition. As it it wordless I am pretty sure it is a modern touch but if not De Vega was well ahead of his time. 
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Yankee Go Home

2/26/2016

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The second of the two plays that I got called back for is a play called Yankee Tavern by Stephen Dietz. It is a 2007 play about conspiracy theories related to the 9/11 attacks.


The play concerns Adam, who is a graduate student in political science or social psychology or government. I can't remember. He is also the owner of a rundown bar and hotel in New York City called the Yankee Tavern. For some reason the he can't sell the bar and it isn't formally condemned by the city but will be torn down if were to be. So, despite owning real estate in Manhattan, he is portrayed as poor and struggling. He is preparing to move to Washington, DC to work for an unnamed government agency. He is also engaged to Janet, She has a job that is never mentioned. They are in conflict over the coming wedding He has been lying to her about his friends. He works I guess at the bar although no one ever seems to be there,.

His father's best friend is a vagrant/local character who somehow has a cell phone with blue tooth. He is a crazy conspiracy theory enthusiast. He writes letter to the editor and calls talk radio shows to spew his conjectures. He squats in the hotel part of the Yankee Tavern. He is meant to be a lovable crank, but he is hard to like because he totally self-obsessed and didactic. He also claims to speak to the dead, including Adam's father who may or may not have committed suicide. Adam is writing his thesis on Ray's crazy, crazy conspiracies. He thinks that they are detrimental to political discourse. Adam also must go to DC with his former professor, a woman, who is helping meet some job prospects. Janet fears he is sleeping with the professor.

A mystery man named Palmer shows up and knows all about Ray's conspiracy theories. He also knows about Adam's father and his revelation of this is the end of Act 1. Act 2 begins with Adam on his trip. Palmer shows up and explains to Janet a conspiracy theory the involves Adam and his professor that was too convoluted for me to follow clearly. Palmer's motives are never explained. Adam comes back and Janet tries to see if Palmer's theories are true. She doubts them but Adam is convinced of their veracity. They somehow involve a mini-disc. Adam disappears.

The final scene is five months later; Adam is missing and given up for dead by all but Janet who is now convinced that some secret conspiracy is responsible fro Adam's disappearance. Palmer cannot be found. Ray also thinks Adam is dead. Then a post card arrives dated five months before. It implies through a cryptic message that Ray is alive. Janet runs out to find him. Ray finds a mini-disc and gets a phone call from someone (Adam) and he asks who it is. There is one huge corny device right as the curtain falls: a jukebox that hasn't operated since 9/11 turns back on, miraculously.

Perhaps one can tell from my tone that I do not like this play much. It wants to have it both ways: conspiracy theories are for kooks and goofballs (Act 1) and; conspiracy theories are actually true (Act 2). That combined with too many unexplained events and muddy, unbelievable given circumstances made for a very annoying read. Wouldn't recommend this one. 
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Judge Not Lest You Be Judged

2/26/2016

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I got called back to two plays so I am going to write about those two since I will read them before the callbacks.

The first is Judgment at Nuremberg by Abby Mann. This is a 2002 adaptation of Mann's script from the 1961 film script, itself and adaptation of his 1959 teleplay written for Playhouse 90. the film was a great success and is one I enjoy watching and one I own, I would love to see the live Playhouse 90 version but that is difficult to find. The film was nominated for 11 oscars and won two for Best Screenplay (Mann) and Best Actor (Maximilian Schell). Its praise and reputation are well deserved.

The play is a truncated version of the film. All of the main scenes and speeches are there. A few slight changes have been made. The Play concerns the last of the Nuremberg Trials, which were held to decide the guilt of the officials of the Nazi regime: the trial of the Third Reich's Judiciary. This trial, while probably the most important in terms of its moral and societal ramifications, came late in the process and with the uneasy alliance between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. coming apart, the public's weariness of the trials, and Germany's support needed at the onset of the Cold War, they were thought to be less important than the earlier trials of Speer, Goring and Hess. Thus efforts were made to rush to judgment and for leniency.

The play outlines the brilliant and complex defense that was put forth by a young German lawyer, whose efforts to make the entire world complicit in the rise of the Third Reich, are noteworthy and contain powerful polemics. The speeches of all of the main characters are all wonderfully written and moving to read. This is one of those plays that I like so much, I don't want to talk about but rather wish to instill in anyone who reads this with a desire to read it and find out for yourselves,

One of the changes from film to stage I like most is the change of race of the young adjutant officer assigned to Main Judge. In the film he is played by a young William Shatner, On stage the character is African-American and when he is asked whether he feels the Germans capable of evils as vile as the Holocaust, his answer is telling and poignant. A welcome addition.
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​In conclusion, I can say one should read this script. Or see the film. Or both. It will be time well spent.   
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