THE ISLE OF DOGS
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For amateur rights, contact: Samuel French, Inc.
Written by Larson & Lee, with Rebecca Wackler.
Commissioned by Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, this comic one act play was a huge hit at The Humana Festival and The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Jon Jory, at ATL, wanted to illustrate the problems and pitfalls of producing new work for the theater. The authors set the play in London, in the 1580′s, during the plague. The Stratford theatre is workshopping a play by author, Nicholas DeBeaubian. The avant-garde, Italian director wants to take in in a different direction, while the Chairwoman of the Board is afraid the play won’t get funding because it’s not relevant to “health-disadvantaged” people, and the intern, Willy, inherits the material, which he will turn into “Macbeth”, when the other characters die, some from plague, the author by hanging himself.
Isle of Dogs excerpt:
(During the following scene, WILLY, wearing thick gloves, and a surgical mask and goggles, takes care of EMILIA’S dead body. He puts her in a body bag and leaves her on the cot. Perhaps he burns the linens.)
TOM: I think she liked it, don’t you?
VIOLA: That scene could have gone on for two hours. It will go on for two hours. Two days! Everyone will be dead. Then it will be art.
TOM: I think she really liked it. I was watching her. Was anyone else watching her? Willy, were you watching her?
VIOLA: I’ve worked with Goldoni…Machiavelli…
TOM: Miss Zardoni…Viola…can I just say something to you for a brief moment?
VILOA: I have a vision for this play, and no one is going to take that vision away from me.
TOM: I think we’re a lot alike, really.
VIOLA:…no hortsy tortsy producer…
TOM: …we both care about the craft…
VIOLA: …no one is going to make this popular…
TOM:…last season, I directed AS MERRY AS MAY BE at the Stratford Community Theatre…
VIOLA:…I see no stage, no curtains, the seats taken out, the theater gutted…
TOM:…I’d like to apologize for my outburst…
VIOLA:…we’ll hang the audience from ropes…
TOM:…actually, I feel like you forced me to face a part of myself that was very hard to face. I fell I grew in a very real way…
VIOLA:… a hundred children dressed as birds, making soap from the dead bodies, casting entrails at the hanging audience, shouting, “Entrails, entrails, eat, eat!”…
TOM: I’ve always avoided London, but now I see I have to go to London. I can’t be afraid of fame…
VIOLA:…eight hours of chanting…eight days of chanting…blood running down the walls…an army of naked Ethiopians hurling shaved monkeys at the audience…then…silence…acrid, putrid smoke…society crumbles…the world dies…end of act one.
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