NYCPlaywrights December 30, 2023
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NYCPlaywrights
Dec 30, 2023, 5:17:33 PM12/30/23
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
A Vigorous Reading of "Everything In New York Goes BANG!"
By Robert Galinsky
Galinsky recounts his journey from childhood in the suburbs of Connecticut, through his interactions with hipsters in the Lower East Side of New York City, to his work with young people incarcerated on Rikers Island Jail. Expertly embodying multiple characters through storytelling and rock-star level poetry, he explores the harmony and turmoil of living in New York City from his arrival in the late 1980’s to his exile and banishment from the notorious Rikers Island Jail in 2022.
The running time is 60 mins long.
Saturday, January 13, 2024, 3 - 5 PM
Jefferson Market Library, First Floor
425 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10011
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2024/01/13/staged-reading-everything-new-york-goes-bang-written-and-performed-robert
*** NYCPLAYWRIGHTS ZOOMERS ***
Weekly playwrights script-reading sessions.
The first session is January 8, 2024.
For more information go to
https://www.nycplaywrights.org/p/nycplaywrights-zoomers.html
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
East Valley Children’s Theatre is searching for aspiring playwrights to become a part of the theatre’s future seasons of performances. As an organization dedicated to providing enriching experiences for young audiences, EVCT recognizes the importance of nurturing new voices and fresh perspectives in the world of theatre. This call for playwrights opens doors for talented individuals to have their works showcased and celebrated on EVCT’s stage, captivating young minds and inspiring imaginations.
***
Gloucester Stage is seeking full-length plays with themes concerning climate change. Although coastal climate change is at the top of mind here, we are open to all plays tackling any theme of climate action.
Unproduced plays will take priority, but fully-produced work can also be submitted.
***
Jakespeare Theatre Company is interested in one-minute plays that play in the sci-fi genre, including (but not limited to): aliens, time travel, future worlds, advanced technology, and space travel!
We welcome comedies, dramas, and everything in between! Plays should be (mostly) family-friendly.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** GREAT BIG MONOLOGUE ***
DOUBT
FATHER FLYNN. What do you do when you're not sure? That's the topic of my sermon today. You look for God's direction and can't find it. Last year when President Kennedy was assassinated, who among us did not experience the most profound disorientation. Despair. "What now? Which way? What do I say to my kids? What do I tell myself?" It was a time of people sitting together, bound together by a common feeling of hopelessness. But think of that! Your bond with your fellow beings was your despair. Jt was a public experience, shared by everyone in our society. It was awful, but we were in it together! How much worse is it then for the lone man, the lone woman, stricken by a private calamity? "No one knows I'm sick. No one knows I've lost my last real friend. No one knows I've done something wrong." Imagine the isolation. You see the world as through a window. On the one side of the glass: happy, untroubled people. On the other side: you. Something has happened, you have to carry it, and it's incommunicable. For those so afflicted, only God knows their pain. Their secret. The secret of their alienating sorrow. And when such a person, as they must, howls to the sky, to God: "Help me!" What if no answer comes? Silence. I want to tell you a story. A cargo ship sank, and all her crew was drowned. Only this one sailor survived. He made a raft of some spars and, being of a nautical discipline, turned his eyes to the Heavens and read the stars. He set a course for his home and, exhausted, fell asleep. Clouds rolled in and blanketed the sky. For the next twenty nights, as he floated on the vast ocean, he could no longer see the stars...
https://archive.org/details/doubtparable00shan/page/n59/mode/2up
***
DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE
GORDON. (To the audience) I woke up that morning — the day I died — thinking I'd like a lobster bisque.
I showered. I had breakfast. Hermia has it timed so she finishes her cereal just as I begin mine. Something proud and untouchable about the way she eats her shredded wheat. A rebuke in the rhythm of her chewing, the curve of her back as she finishes her last bite, standing, washing out the bowl. Who cleans the bowl while they're chewing the last bite? She washes the bowl like this. Getting rid of all the unchewed bits. No respect for the discarded.
I ran to the subway in the rain. I didn't say good-bye. I didn't have an umbrella. I thought about going back for an umbrella, maybe giving Hermia an old-fashioned kiss on the cheek that would soften her face, but I remembered the curve of her implacable back and I forged ahead in the rain, umbrella-less.
You know when people are so crushed together in the rain, in the city, so many people, that no one person needs an umbrella, because one umbrella covers three bodies? And everyone's yelling into their cell phones, and I'm thinking, where have all the phone booths gone? The phone booths are all dead. People are yammering into their phones and I hear fragments of lost love and hepatitis and I'm thinking, is there no privacy? Is there no dignity...
https://archive.org/details/deadmanscellphon00ruhl/page/58/mode/2up
***
THE HEIDI CHRONICLES
HEIDI. Hello. Hello. I graduated from Miss Crain’s in 1965, and I look back on my education in Chicago very fondly. One of the far-reaching habits I developed at Miss Crain’s was waiting until the desperation point to complete, or rather, start my homework. Keeping that noble academic tradition alive, I appear before you today with no formal speech. I have no outline, no pink notecards, no hieroglyphics scribbled on my palm. Nothing.
Well, you might be thinking, this is a women’s meeting, so let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. After teaching at Columbia yesterday, Miss Holland probably attended a low impact aerobics class with weights, picked up her children from school, brought the older one to drawing with computers at the Metropolitan, and the younger one to swimming for gifted children. On returning home, she immediately prepared grilled mesquite free-range chicken with balsamic vinegar and sun-dried tomatoes, advised her investment banker/well-rounded husband on the future finances for the City Ballet, put the children to bed, recited their favorite Greek myths and sex education legends, dashed into the library to call the 22-year-old squash player who is passionately in love with her to say that they can only be friends, finished writing ten pages of a new book, brought the remains of the mesquite free-range dinner to a Church that feeds the homeless, massaged her husband’s feet, and relieved any fears that he “‘might”’ be getting old by “doing it’ in the kitchen, read forty pages of the Inferno in Italian, took a deep breath, and put out the light. So after all this, we forgive Miss Holland for not preparing a speech today. She’s exemplary and exhausted...
https://archive.org/details/heidichroniclesp0000wass/page/58/mode/2up?q=%22Well%2C+you+might+be+thinking%22
***
WAITING FOR GODOT
LUCKY. Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labours of men that as a result of the labours unfinished of Testew and Cunard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labours of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation is seen to waste and pine waste and pine and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicilline...
https://archive.org/details/waitingforgodott0000beck_b3g6/page/42/mode/2up?q=%22who+from+the+heights+of+divine%22
***
MEDEA
MEDEA. God, and God’s daughter, justice, and light of Helius!
Now, friends, has come the time of my triumph over My enemies, and now my foot is on the road.
Now I am confident they will pay the penalty. For this man, Aegeus, has been like a harbor to me
In all my plans just where I was most distressed. To him I can fasten the cable of my safety When I have reached the town and fortress of Pallas. And now I shall tell to you the whole of my plan. Listen to these words that are not spoken idly.
I shall send one of my servants to find Jason And request him to come once more into my sight.
And when he comes, the words I'll say will be soft ones.
I'll say that I agree with him, that I approve
The royal wedding he has made, betraying me.
I'll say it was profitable, an excellent idea.
But I shall beg that my children may remain here: Not that I would leave in a country that hates me Children of mine to feel their enemies’ insults,
But that by a trick I may kill the king’s daughter. For I will send the children with gifts in their hands
To carry to the bride, so as not to be banished—
A finely woven dress and a golden diadem...
https://archive.org/details/euripides-medea-warner/page/86/mode/2up
***
ANGELS IN AMERICA ~ PERESTROIKA
ANGEL. You only think you do.
Life is a habit with you.
You have not seen what is to come.
We have.
What will the grim Unfolding of these Latter Days bring?
That you or any Being should wish to endure them?
Death more plenteous than all Heaven has tears to mourn it,
The slow dissolving of the Great Design,
The spiraling apart of the Work of Eternity,
The World and its beautiful particle logic
All collapsed. All dead, forever,
In starless, moonlorn onyx night...
https://archive.org/details/angelsinamericag0001kush/page/134/mode/2up?q=%22you+have+not+seen+what+is+to+come%22
***
THE MATCHMAKER
DOLLY LEVI. Ephraim Levi, I’m going to get married again. Ephraim, I’m marrying Horace Vandergelder for 'his money. I’m going to send his money out doing all the things you taught me. Oh, it won’t be a marriage in the sense that we had one — but I shall certainly make him happy, and— Ephraim — I’m tired. I’m tired of living from hand to mouth, and I’m asking your permission, Ephraim — will you give me away? (Now addressing the audience she holds up the purse, crosses to below pouffe and sits.) Money, money, money — it’s like the sun we walk under: it can kill and it can cure. Horace Vandergelder’s never tired of saying most of the people in the world are fools, and in a way he’s right, isn’t he? Himself, Irene, Cornelius, myself! But there comes a moment in everybody’s life when he must decide whether he’ll live among human beings or not — a fool among fools or a fool alone. As for me. I’ve decided to live among them. (Crosses and sits down Right end of sofa L.) I wasn’t always so. After my husband’s death I retired into myself. Yes, in the evenings, I’d put out the cat and I’d lock the door and make myself a little rum toddy; and before I went to bed I’d say a little prayer thanking God that I was independent...
https://archive.org/details/matchmakerfarcei0000wild/page/110/mode/2up?q=%22Ephraim+Levi%2C+I%27m+going+to+get+married+again%22
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
A Vigorous Reading of "Everything In New York Goes BANG!"
By Robert Galinsky
Galinsky recounts his journey from childhood in the suburbs of Connecticut, through his interactions with hipsters in the Lower East Side of New York City, to his work with young people incarcerated on Rikers Island Jail. Expertly embodying multiple characters through storytelling and rock-star level poetry, he explores the harmony and turmoil of living in New York City from his arrival in the late 1980’s to his exile and banishment from the notorious Rikers Island Jail in 2022.
The running time is 60 mins long.
Saturday, January 13, 2024, 3 - 5 PM
Jefferson Market Library, First Floor
425 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10011
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2024/01/13/staged-reading-everything-new-york-goes-bang-written-and-performed-robert
*** NYCPLAYWRIGHTS ZOOMERS ***
Weekly playwrights script-reading sessions.
The first session is January 8, 2024.
For more information go to
https://www.nycplaywrights.org/p/nycplaywrights-zoomers.html
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
East Valley Children’s Theatre is searching for aspiring playwrights to become a part of the theatre’s future seasons of performances. As an organization dedicated to providing enriching experiences for young audiences, EVCT recognizes the importance of nurturing new voices and fresh perspectives in the world of theatre. This call for playwrights opens doors for talented individuals to have their works showcased and celebrated on EVCT’s stage, captivating young minds and inspiring imaginations.
***
Gloucester Stage is seeking full-length plays with themes concerning climate change. Although coastal climate change is at the top of mind here, we are open to all plays tackling any theme of climate action.
Unproduced plays will take priority, but fully-produced work can also be submitted.
***
Jakespeare Theatre Company is interested in one-minute plays that play in the sci-fi genre, including (but not limited to): aliens, time travel, future worlds, advanced technology, and space travel!
We welcome comedies, dramas, and everything in between! Plays should be (mostly) family-friendly.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** GREAT BIG MONOLOGUE ***
DOUBT
FATHER FLYNN. What do you do when you're not sure? That's the topic of my sermon today. You look for God's direction and can't find it. Last year when President Kennedy was assassinated, who among us did not experience the most profound disorientation. Despair. "What now? Which way? What do I say to my kids? What do I tell myself?" It was a time of people sitting together, bound together by a common feeling of hopelessness. But think of that! Your bond with your fellow beings was your despair. Jt was a public experience, shared by everyone in our society. It was awful, but we were in it together! How much worse is it then for the lone man, the lone woman, stricken by a private calamity? "No one knows I'm sick. No one knows I've lost my last real friend. No one knows I've done something wrong." Imagine the isolation. You see the world as through a window. On the one side of the glass: happy, untroubled people. On the other side: you. Something has happened, you have to carry it, and it's incommunicable. For those so afflicted, only God knows their pain. Their secret. The secret of their alienating sorrow. And when such a person, as they must, howls to the sky, to God: "Help me!" What if no answer comes? Silence. I want to tell you a story. A cargo ship sank, and all her crew was drowned. Only this one sailor survived. He made a raft of some spars and, being of a nautical discipline, turned his eyes to the Heavens and read the stars. He set a course for his home and, exhausted, fell asleep. Clouds rolled in and blanketed the sky. For the next twenty nights, as he floated on the vast ocean, he could no longer see the stars...
https://archive.org/details/doubtparable00shan/page/n59/mode/2up
***
DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE
GORDON. (To the audience) I woke up that morning — the day I died — thinking I'd like a lobster bisque.
I showered. I had breakfast. Hermia has it timed so she finishes her cereal just as I begin mine. Something proud and untouchable about the way she eats her shredded wheat. A rebuke in the rhythm of her chewing, the curve of her back as she finishes her last bite, standing, washing out the bowl. Who cleans the bowl while they're chewing the last bite? She washes the bowl like this. Getting rid of all the unchewed bits. No respect for the discarded.
I ran to the subway in the rain. I didn't say good-bye. I didn't have an umbrella. I thought about going back for an umbrella, maybe giving Hermia an old-fashioned kiss on the cheek that would soften her face, but I remembered the curve of her implacable back and I forged ahead in the rain, umbrella-less.
You know when people are so crushed together in the rain, in the city, so many people, that no one person needs an umbrella, because one umbrella covers three bodies? And everyone's yelling into their cell phones, and I'm thinking, where have all the phone booths gone? The phone booths are all dead. People are yammering into their phones and I hear fragments of lost love and hepatitis and I'm thinking, is there no privacy? Is there no dignity...
https://archive.org/details/deadmanscellphon00ruhl/page/58/mode/2up
***
THE HEIDI CHRONICLES
HEIDI. Hello. Hello. I graduated from Miss Crain’s in 1965, and I look back on my education in Chicago very fondly. One of the far-reaching habits I developed at Miss Crain’s was waiting until the desperation point to complete, or rather, start my homework. Keeping that noble academic tradition alive, I appear before you today with no formal speech. I have no outline, no pink notecards, no hieroglyphics scribbled on my palm. Nothing.
Well, you might be thinking, this is a women’s meeting, so let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. After teaching at Columbia yesterday, Miss Holland probably attended a low impact aerobics class with weights, picked up her children from school, brought the older one to drawing with computers at the Metropolitan, and the younger one to swimming for gifted children. On returning home, she immediately prepared grilled mesquite free-range chicken with balsamic vinegar and sun-dried tomatoes, advised her investment banker/well-rounded husband on the future finances for the City Ballet, put the children to bed, recited their favorite Greek myths and sex education legends, dashed into the library to call the 22-year-old squash player who is passionately in love with her to say that they can only be friends, finished writing ten pages of a new book, brought the remains of the mesquite free-range dinner to a Church that feeds the homeless, massaged her husband’s feet, and relieved any fears that he “‘might”’ be getting old by “doing it’ in the kitchen, read forty pages of the Inferno in Italian, took a deep breath, and put out the light. So after all this, we forgive Miss Holland for not preparing a speech today. She’s exemplary and exhausted...
https://archive.org/details/heidichroniclesp0000wass/page/58/mode/2up?q=%22Well%2C+you+might+be+thinking%22
***
WAITING FOR GODOT
LUCKY. Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labours of men that as a result of the labours unfinished of Testew and Cunard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labours of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation is seen to waste and pine waste and pine and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicilline...
https://archive.org/details/waitingforgodott0000beck_b3g6/page/42/mode/2up?q=%22who+from+the+heights+of+divine%22
***
MEDEA
MEDEA. God, and God’s daughter, justice, and light of Helius!
Now, friends, has come the time of my triumph over My enemies, and now my foot is on the road.
Now I am confident they will pay the penalty. For this man, Aegeus, has been like a harbor to me
In all my plans just where I was most distressed. To him I can fasten the cable of my safety When I have reached the town and fortress of Pallas. And now I shall tell to you the whole of my plan. Listen to these words that are not spoken idly.
I shall send one of my servants to find Jason And request him to come once more into my sight.
And when he comes, the words I'll say will be soft ones.
I'll say that I agree with him, that I approve
The royal wedding he has made, betraying me.
I'll say it was profitable, an excellent idea.
But I shall beg that my children may remain here: Not that I would leave in a country that hates me Children of mine to feel their enemies’ insults,
But that by a trick I may kill the king’s daughter. For I will send the children with gifts in their hands
To carry to the bride, so as not to be banished—
A finely woven dress and a golden diadem...
https://archive.org/details/euripides-medea-warner/page/86/mode/2up
***
ANGELS IN AMERICA ~ PERESTROIKA
ANGEL. You only think you do.
Life is a habit with you.
You have not seen what is to come.
We have.
What will the grim Unfolding of these Latter Days bring?
That you or any Being should wish to endure them?
Death more plenteous than all Heaven has tears to mourn it,
The slow dissolving of the Great Design,
The spiraling apart of the Work of Eternity,
The World and its beautiful particle logic
All collapsed. All dead, forever,
In starless, moonlorn onyx night...
https://archive.org/details/angelsinamericag0001kush/page/134/mode/2up?q=%22you+have+not+seen+what+is+to+come%22
***
THE MATCHMAKER
DOLLY LEVI. Ephraim Levi, I’m going to get married again. Ephraim, I’m marrying Horace Vandergelder for 'his money. I’m going to send his money out doing all the things you taught me. Oh, it won’t be a marriage in the sense that we had one — but I shall certainly make him happy, and— Ephraim — I’m tired. I’m tired of living from hand to mouth, and I’m asking your permission, Ephraim — will you give me away? (Now addressing the audience she holds up the purse, crosses to below pouffe and sits.) Money, money, money — it’s like the sun we walk under: it can kill and it can cure. Horace Vandergelder’s never tired of saying most of the people in the world are fools, and in a way he’s right, isn’t he? Himself, Irene, Cornelius, myself! But there comes a moment in everybody’s life when he must decide whether he’ll live among human beings or not — a fool among fools or a fool alone. As for me. I’ve decided to live among them. (Crosses and sits down Right end of sofa L.) I wasn’t always so. After my husband’s death I retired into myself. Yes, in the evenings, I’d put out the cat and I’d lock the door and make myself a little rum toddy; and before I went to bed I’d say a little prayer thanking God that I was independent...
https://archive.org/details/matchmakerfarcei0000wild/page/110/mode/2up?q=%22Ephraim+Levi%2C+I%27m+going+to+get+married+again%22
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