|
A COFFIN IN EGYPT
by HORTON FOOTE MYRTLE I’m older by twenty years than the mulatto, Maude Jenkins, but I’ve outlived so many, I might outlive her. Who will come to her funeral? There will be lots of Jenkins there, because they are still thick in the country and the blacks will come from everywhere from all the bottoms and the prairies, out of curiosity if nothing else. (a pause) And I’d like to go just to get a look at her after all these years. But I couldn’t, of course, even if I was still alive then. (a pause) “The Angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that’s wakened out of his sleep.” (a pause) “The Angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that’s wakened out of his sleep.” (a pause) What was the name of Mr. Frohman’s theater? The Empire. It was across the street from the Metropolitan Opera House. They’re both torn down I read somewhere. I attended them both. Many times. I loved New York. I loved Paris. I loved Algiers. I loved Rome. I loved...Egypt. Not, Egypt, Texas, but Egypt. Egypt...Magic, Egypt. I used to tell Hunter that when I died I wanted to be cremated and have my ashes taken to one of the beautiful places I’d known as a young woman. But now, I don’t care. Who is there left to take my ashes anywhere? Anyway, they have a place for my body between Hunter’s grave and my two girls and that’s where I’ll end. In a coffin in Egypt. This Egypt. Out on the prairie. And in the spring our graves will be covered with the wildflowers, with primroses and Indian blankets and blue bonnets. |
Bhutan
By Daisy Foote FRANCES: She has all these boxes filled with pictures and each box is labeled with a different country's name. She can take a picture...any picture and remember everything about it...the day it was taken...who was there...what they were talking about...what they ate or drank...where they went next. And after she's shown me the last picture, she always says the same thing, "I think a brew is in order." And while I put out the cups and saucers, Nora, Nora makes the tea. (We stay with Warren, Frances and Mary for a few more beats and then the lights start to fade...BLACKOUT.) 
Cynthia Hopkins 2010
|
Aleshea Harris 2018
Sarah DeLappe 2018
|
Sylvan Oswald 2010
|
Milan Stitt 2006
Max Posner 2016
Judy
TIMOTHY Yeah I know, Okay? No one says it anymore. But guess what? I do. I always will, my children will, their children will. We will be the ones who say Fuck. Long after anyone knows what it means. Soon it will be another word for rock. Another word for tooth. Another word for for for Sorry. And we will walk on the fucks through the woods! We will skip fucks in the river! We will get braces to straighten our fucks! We will feel fuck about it, it will be fucky. No one says it anymore but we will, okay? |
Arthur Kopit, 2008
Nia O. Witherspoon 2019
|
|
|
David Ives, 2008 Kirk Wood Broomley 2008
|
|
Candy and Dorothy CANDY: Don’t smoke. Don’t exploit the workers. Don’t get a sex change. Don’t make me a saint. You're just an impossible pill. |
Caroline V. McGraw 2017 Lee Blessing and Melanie Marnich 2008 David Johnston, 2006
The Mercy Seat
Ben Harcourt: Jesus…you think I was born this way, like some cut-throat pirate of the high seas? Huh? Hell, I’m just trying to muddle through, that’s all, just muddle my fucking way through to middle age, see if I can make it that far. You like trivia so goddamn much, well here’s a little tidbit for ya…I’m faking it. Okay? Totally getting by on fumes. I put my game face on and go out there and I’m scared shitless. (BEAT) I’ve screwed up every step of my life, Abby, I’m not afraid to admit it. Happy to, actually, I am happy to sing it out there for anybody who wants to hear. I always take the easy route, do it faster, simpler, you know, whatever it takes to get it done, be liked, get by. That’s me. Cheated in school, screwed over my friends, took whatever I could get from whomever I could take it from. My marriage, there’s a goddamn fiasco, of which you’re intimately aware. The kids…I barely register as a dad, I’m sure, but compared to the other shit in my life, I’m Doctor-fucking-Spock. No matter what I do or have done, they adore the hell out of me and I’m totally knocked out by that. What kids are like. Yeah… (BEAT) And you, let’s not forget you. Us. Okay, yes, I haven’t done all that I’ve promised, Neil LaBute 2008
said I’d do, I fuck up along the way. Alright. But I’m trying, this time out--with you, I mean--I have been trying. Don’t know what it looks like, feels to you, but I have made a real go of us and that is not a lie. It isn’t. And sothen, yesterday--through all the smoke and fear and just, I dunno, apocalyptic shit--I see a way for us to go for it, to totally erase the past… (BEAT) And I don’t think it makes me Lucifer or acriminal or some bad man because I noticed it. I really don’t. We’ve been given something here, a chance to…I don’t know what, to wash away a lot of the, just, rotten crap we’ve done. More than anything else, ...that's what this is. a chance. I know it is.
|
Luscious Music
Clea: If you ain't ready to walk, they got your ass in a sling, you hear me, babe? |
|
Susan Mosakowski, 2007
Nilaja Sun, 2007