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Drama Book Shop PLAY OF THE WEEK
Polaroid Stories "I first picked up Polaroid Stories one afternoon last summer. I was searching for new monologues and remembered, from a production of the play I saw a while ago, that there were a lot of potentially good ones for me in the script. I started reading it. . . . and then I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t meant to spend a sunny summer afternoon curled up on my couch, reading. It just happened. The collage of beautifully written, visceral stories sucked me in completely; and it has since become one of my favorite plays. "In Polaroid Stories, Naomi Iizuka takes several well-known Greek myths (Orpheus and Eurydice, Ariande in the Labyrinth, and Prometheus, to name a few) and retells them through the eyes of street kids. She cuts between them, first telling a bit of one, and then a bit of another, weaving them together into a beautiful but haunting tapestry that hits you right in the gut. In the writing itself, she mixes poetry and the language of the street to create something spellbinding, scary, haunting, and absolutely beautiful. "Writing aside, Iizuka also uses sound and light to great effect in this play. She often underscores the scenes with music, breathing, and "the sounds of the street;" or punctuates moments with flashes of light or other specific effects which she stipulates in the script. These complete the story and add to the atmosphere even more. "And then, (most importantly,) this play offers amazing opportunities for actors. The characters Iizuka creates are tough as nails on the outside—but only to conceal a vulnerability and a need so great that it dwarfs everything else. Every once in a while their exteriors crack, but only for an instant—but it is always there, hidden just beneath the surface. Every one of these characters has something they are pursuing with their whole heart, or someone they are running from, just trying to stay alive. Her adaptation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice I found especially powerful. "I ended up learning a Eurydice monologue last summer, and it is now one of my go-to pieces when I am asked to for “something else” at auditions. When I did it for my acting coach at the British American Drama Academy he told me, “You have picked a monologue where the world is your oyster. You can do anything with that monologue, and it would probably work.” The thing is, most of the play is like that. What more can an actor ask for?" Reviewed by Shawn Palmer
Full-length Play
Cast: 5m., 5w. (Gender-flexible casting is permitted.) A visceral blend of classical mythology and real life stories told by street kids, Naomi lizuka's Polaroid Stories journeys into a dangerous world where myth-making fulfills a fierce need for transcendence, where storytelling has the power to transform a reality in which characters' lives are continually threatened, devalued and effaced. Not all the stories these characters tell are true; some are lies, wild yams, clever deceits, baroque fabrications. But whether or not a homeless kid invents an incredible history for himself isn't the point, explains diarist-of-the-street Jim Grimsley. "All these stories and lies add up to something like the truth." Inspired in part by Ovid's Metamorphoses, Iizuka's Polaroid Stories takes place on an abandoned pier on the outermost edge of a city, a way stop for dreamers, dealers and desperadoes, a no-man's land where runaways seek camaraderie, refuge and escape. Serpentine routes from the street to the heart characterize the interactions in this spellbinding tale of young people pushed to society's fringe. Informed, as well, by interviews with young prostitutes and street kids, Polaroid Stories conveys a whirlwind of psychic disturbance, confusion and longing. Like their mythic counterparts, these modem-day mortals are engulfed by needs that burn and consume. Their language mixes poetry and profanity, imbuing the play with lyricism and great theatrical force. Approximate running time: 2 hours.
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The Drama Book Shop PLAY OF THE WEEK
TWO ROOMS An American teacher is held hostage in a dark room after being captured in Beirut. His wife holds a vigil for him in an empty room in their house outside DC. Michael dictates unsent letters to his wife from his cell. Lainie vies between Walker, a journalist intent to tell her story to the public and Ellen, a State Department official who wants to keep her quiet. When Lainie finds out that Walker has written a story about her without her permission, she has to come to terms with her grief in a more public setting and has to reconcile what impact telling her story to the public will have. As events in the Middle East spin out of everyone's control, the characters try to do their best to manage the situation to bring Michael back to the United Stages, but everyone has their own interests at stake. Two Rooms navigates the real and imagined worlds of the four characters. As they interact with one another in their minds, their imagined conversations affect their real life actions. Blessing explores what it means to be an American at war on foreign soil, what the American legacy is, not just for the military and the government, but for people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the wrong nationality in the wrong place. He also explores the role of the media and the government in releasing information to the public while withholding information from military enemies. First performed in 1988, Two Rooms is a classic, relevant play about best intentions and the trouble with fighting an enemy with an entirely different philosophy. Excellent scenes and monologues for all characters, 2 men, 2 women 30s-40s. Reviewed by Kate  Two Rooms (Paperback)$8.95 ISBN-13: 9780822211839Availability: On Our Shelves Now Published: Dramatists Play Service, 12/01/1990 |
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 $10.00 The Phobia Clinic, a full-length narrative poem, relates the harrowing journey of a Dante-esque narrator through the coils of a clinic designed to counter (or perhaps encourage) fear. Nine years in the writing, The Phobia Clinic was privately published in a signed, numbered, limited edition only available from the Drama Book Shop and from the author. David Ives is perhaps best known for his evenings of one-act comedies: All In The Timing and Time Flies. All In The Timing won the Outer Critics Circle Playwriting Award and ran for two years Off-Broadway. His full-length plays include Venus In Fur, which recently enjoyed a vast critical and audience success Off-Broadway; New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza, which won the prestigious Hull-Warriner Award and was presented by Washington’s Theatre J this spring; Is He Dead? (adapted from Mark Twain); Irving Berlin’s White Christmas; Polish Joke; and Ancient History. He has translated Feydeau’s classic farce A Flea In Her Ear as well as Yazmina Reza’s drama A Spanish Play, and has adapted 28 musical for Encores!. He is also the author of three young-adult novels, Monsieur Eek, Scrib, and Voss. A graduate of Yale School of Drama and a former Guggenheim Fellow in playwriting, he lives in New York City. Signed, Hand-Numbered, Limited Edition: Available exclusively from the Author and the Drama Book Shop. $10.00 |
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