Idea for a play
This is one for Jesse Blaine.
A run-down porch on a rotten shack of a home.
We open on an older woman with a shotgun pointed at very specific members of the audience. She's waiting for General Sherman to come burn her place down. She's got a lot of kids, and she keeps refering to her shack as though it's some lavish plantation that's in need of protection. Once the audience gains her trust, she starts to tell lude jokes and let her guard down. Eventually she sets her gun on the ground. Maybe she makes some lemonade during the intermission. In any case, by the start of act II, she plays the part of a hostess for a big party. Maybe celebrating the end of the world. She gives audience members cookies and tells them not to eat them until the end of the play, "when the lights go out."
then...
A REALLY BIG TWIST.
The end.
Right now, I'm tentatively titleling this piece "A House of Lies" until I can come up with a better name. Something less melodramatic. This play will only work if I can drag some laughs out of the audience. Right now, I'm thinking one actor. This would be my first ever one-person show.
We'll see how it goes.
I'm reading Flannery O'Connor right now. Fucking marvelous. Jesse Blaine would eat it up.
1 comment:
I'm very curious about how this idea germinated. It sounds like you have more of an intrigue for the female character herself than of anything else in your play. And the fact that you've tentatively titled it "House of Lies" makes me think that the backbone of the story will be to gain the audience's trust as much as possible, and even reassure them that they are in a safe and sound environment. Then when they're mid-chuckle/mid-weep, turn them around and fuck them in the ass with a machete.
Very Blainesque. I wish you luck. A one-person play always sounds like a really fun thing to do..and then you start to write it and you wonder if you'd be breaking any one-person-show-rules if you just threw in one extra character. Or a big explosion. Or a machete dildo.
PS Happy Boxing Day, to you too, Sir Dear.
PPS Give us a ring-a-ding sometime.
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