Time for another shout out to one of the many things that I love and adore. The photo above is a scene from Charles Mee's Paradise Park. I was so amazed to find pictures from the actual play I got to see in New York two years ago. I was in this room with this very stage before me, these actors breathing the same air as I, less than 50 feet away. I'm totally geeking out, but that's what theater does to me. Especially Charles Mee's plays.
Also, I recently found out that in my garbage dump of a situation, ie. being stuck at Humboldt State for another semester, I will now be able to see Hotel Cassiopeia again (a Charles Mee play focused on the artist Joseph Cornell). Maybe they'll hold student auditions?? Yuh yuh.
So Paradise Park was the most amazing, crazy, spectacular, adjective, adjective, adjective play I've ever seen and I feel that I need to share an excerpt from it with the world:
The Prom Dress
[Nancy is standing in the middle of an RV campground
wearing her prom dress.]
NANCY
I think, really, if I could just get a job
that would be in some way useful,
like, for example, if I worked for a fan magazine
say an entertainment magazine
about movie stars and soap opera actors
and it made a profit of, say, $400 million a year
and gave maybe $80 million of that to charity
I would think: this is a useful life to live
whereas the way it is I think I'm a completely useless person.
I'm not the sort of person who blurts things out.
In fact, just the opposite
so much so that
when I went to the emergency room
because I thought I was having a heart attack
the doctor said you're just panicking
from stress
and you could have a stress heart attack
if you don't just let things out a little more and relax.
Sometimes I think nothing is chance
everything is fate
and then other times I think everything is chance.
I wish I'd have been more, I don't know,
stable.
Which I haven't so much been.
And I could have settled down and taken care of Darling
and it wouldn't have seemed
as it seems to me now
that my life has just gone by like a stampede
and left me in the dust.
And then when we were going through the Grand Canyon
and this little boy was vomiting pizza on Morton's feet
which just freaked Morton out
so he stood up in the boat
we all went into the water
I don't know what happened to the little boy
as far as I know he never got back up again to the surface
But partly I was glad I'd lost you Morton.
I mean, I hoped in a way that you hadn't drowned,
but I used to be in love with a man
who didn't love me as much as I loved him
and now I don't love you as much as you love me
and even though I can't bear to leave you
because I know how much that hurts
still, I wasn't hoping you would exactly drown
but, Jesus, Morton,
like everyone else,
sometimes I wish my husband were dead.
And Darling
we took her to see Cats 23 times
and we took her to see Phantom of the Opera 17 times
but even so
you don't know how much you love your children until they're gone.
[Nancy is standing in the middle of an RV campground
wearing her prom dress.]
NANCY
I think, really, if I could just get a job
that would be in some way useful,
like, for example, if I worked for a fan magazine
say an entertainment magazine
about movie stars and soap opera actors
and it made a profit of, say, $400 million a year
and gave maybe $80 million of that to charity
I would think: this is a useful life to live
whereas the way it is I think I'm a completely useless person.
I'm not the sort of person who blurts things out.
In fact, just the opposite
so much so that
when I went to the emergency room
because I thought I was having a heart attack
the doctor said you're just panicking
from stress
and you could have a stress heart attack
if you don't just let things out a little more and relax.
Sometimes I think nothing is chance
everything is fate
and then other times I think everything is chance.
I wish I'd have been more, I don't know,
stable.
Which I haven't so much been.
And I could have settled down and taken care of Darling
and it wouldn't have seemed
as it seems to me now
that my life has just gone by like a stampede
and left me in the dust.
And then when we were going through the Grand Canyon
and this little boy was vomiting pizza on Morton's feet
which just freaked Morton out
so he stood up in the boat
we all went into the water
I don't know what happened to the little boy
as far as I know he never got back up again to the surface
But partly I was glad I'd lost you Morton.
I mean, I hoped in a way that you hadn't drowned,
but I used to be in love with a man
who didn't love me as much as I loved him
and now I don't love you as much as you love me
and even though I can't bear to leave you
because I know how much that hurts
still, I wasn't hoping you would exactly drown
but, Jesus, Morton,
like everyone else,
sometimes I wish my husband were dead.
And Darling
we took her to see Cats 23 times
and we took her to see Phantom of the Opera 17 times
but even so
you don't know how much you love your children until they're gone.
........................
1 comment:
I stole that monologue and gave it to Mary for her audition piece. It's so good. ALSO, I'm going to call you sometime later tonight because there was something in there I was confused about. But all in good time.
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