How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel (1998)

Summary:  Over the course of thirty years, Lil Bit's relationship with her uncle-by-marriage Peck is explored.  He teaches her to drive, takes her out drinking for the first time and eventually visits her at college.  He begins touching her inappropriately before she can reach the pedals of his car (presumably age 11), and their last meeting (when she is in college) ends in a vague sexual experience and a proposal.  She states that she will not marry him, nor will she be home for Christmas.  She never sees him again. 

 

Thoughts:  Though the summary reflects a relatively straightforward plot, Vogel uses a number of techniques to ensure that style takes center stage in this play.  Lil' Bit is played by one actress, age flexible but likely in her 30s (Mary-Louise Parker in the original Broadway cast).  However, she morphs in age back to eleven and the action of the narrative is aided by individual characters named Male Greek Chorus, Female Greek Chorus, Teenager Greek Chorus, each played by an individual actor.

 

While the incest is unquestionable, the play raises questions about degrees of guilt and innocence (Vogel describes "Peck--attractive man in his 40s.  Despite a few problems, he should be played by an actor one might cast in the role of Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird.")  Further complicating the play, Lil' Bit sometimes directly invites Peck's touch.

 

Like Vogel's The Long Christmas Ride Home, the style of the play enables her to write a fairly straightforward dysfunctional family drama in a very unique and dynamic way.

 

Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (2005)

Summary:  Sister Aloysius is convinced that Father Flynn has had an inappropriate relationship with Donald Muller--a twelve year old in the parish.  She is hellbent on getting him fired and Sister James, an eager young nun, is not sure who to believe.

Thoughts:  After writing about reading Harvey, Our Town and Fences after seeing them on stage/film, I began to wonder if reading a play after you have seen it performed completely changes the experience.  While I have seen the 2008 film version of Doubt (directed by the playwright) I did not find myself constantly thinking about the inflections of Streep, Hoffman and Adams while reading this text.  Shanley's precise writing enables the text to stand alone.  With or without performance, this piece of writing is remarkable.  The language of Doubt is uncomplicated and (perhaps because of this) the dialogue moves rapidly.  The play is one of the fastest reads I have encountered in the project.

Additionally, Shanley's Prologue explains that this play was inspired by his own experiences as a child of the 60s in a strict Catholic school.  Speaking prosaically about the tension between doubt and certainty, this piece of the text is evidence that Shanley writes well in a variety of genres (he does have an Oscar for Moonstruck, after all).  Go to a bookstore and read the Prologue.  It will probably make you want to read the play.

"We've got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty.  There is no last word.  That's the silence under the chatter of our time."

-end of the Prologue

No Place To Be Somebody by Charles Cordone (1970)

Summary:  Johnny Williams is a young black man who owns a bar in New York City in/around the late 1960s.  The people who come in and out of the bar have their own set of agendas and each character fulfills a very specific role/purpose.

Thoughts:  The summary above is probably the most insufficient I've written since starting this project.  There's no way to compactly summarize this play without a scene-by-scene plot description and an annotated character list.  Much like The Time of Your Life (1940), the dramatic action of this play is dependent on the actors who enter and exit the bar, but unlike ...Life, there is an enormous amount of action in this play.  The play makes a number of statements about race, ethnicity and gender in the way that it casts it's characters.  For example, the primary female characters (Dee, Evie) are whores, and the only other important female in the play is Mary Lou--a white civil rights activist who is ultimately used only as a pawn because her father is a judge and Johnny is trying to outsmart some Italian mobsters.

Most of the statements about equality and civil rights are relegated to Gabe, the poet of the group who is given long soliloquies in the form of poems that talk about black anger, white oppression and the relationship between whites and blacks in the 70s.  Gabe's statements are often eloquent, but sometimes seemed forced in a play that details the day-to-day activities of a bar.  At intervals throughout the play, a character will say something to the effect of, "Gabe!  Give us a poem now!" and the soliloquy/diatribe/important social message will begin.

Additionally, the subplot involving Johnny and the mobsters seems incredibly out of place.  With a few days distance, it almost feels like Cordone wrote a play about a bar and the characters who come through the doors, didn't think it was enough and needed to add another element of drama.  Though this play is unquestionably important (first black playwright and first off-Broadway play to win a Pulitzer), I found a surprising number of flaws.

Picnic by William Inge (1953)

Summary: Madge and Millie Owens are two sisters of "marrying age" who are preparing for a town picnic. While this is a relatively normal event, the stakes are raised when Hal Carter, a boy with a past, appears and is set up with Millie--the smarter and less attractive of the Owens sisters.  While Millie prepares for her first real date, mutual attraction develops between Madge (practically engaged to Hal's friend Alan) and Hal. This attraction results in a rape (?).  Ultimately, Madge states that she has feelings for him and is leaving her family behind to chase him on a train.

Thoughts: This play seemed a whole lot more banal until I typed, "This attraction results in a rape (?)"  The play was originally produced in 1953, and stereotypical gender roles are evident throughout. Mr. Owens is never seen and Mrs. Owens only infrequently refers to him, always with undertones of "that good for nothing I lusted after back in the day." Additionally, there is a pack of schoolteachers who are relegated to "old maid" status, until one of them essentially bullies a man into marrying her and whisking her away from her humdrum life. Well, come to think of it, this play is an interesting examination of gender, especially in rural landscapes of the 1950s. The entire play takes place on/around the front yards surrounding two porches and the setting and accompanying mentality reminded me of very much of Oklahoma!

"We're not goin' on no God-damn picnic."

Ruined by Lynn Nottage (2009)

Summary:  Mama Nadi owns a bar/brothel in The Democratic Republic of Congo.  One of her rules involves serving any paying customer:  including soldiers on either side of the conflict.  The setting never changes, but stakes are raised when she is asked to take in more girls than she can handle and is visited both by rebel leaders and soldiers from the current government.   

Thoughts:  I feel like it is really difficult to offer any sort of critique of this play without appearing racist or culturally insensitive.  While the subject matter is unquestionably compelling, I was not extraordinarily moved by the actual text.  I was, however, moved by the photographs of the women in the appendix of the play (taken by Nottage’s husband) and information included in the Introduction (by director Kate Whorisky).  While the play is not an ethnography, Nottage’s work was primarily informed by interviews with women (in the Congo) who have experienced sexual violence as a result of the political upheaval in their country.  Unlike other interview-based work (The Laramie Project, The Exonerated) this play veers away from traditional monologue storytelling…and perhaps this is why I felt emotionally removed from a very emotional subject.

Other nominees in 2009 included In the Heights and Becky Shaw—both largely about families and their internal conflicts, so perhaps the committee decided it was time to award a play set outside of a nuclear family in the United States (from 2000-2010, over half of the recipients involve a central theme of dysfunction in the American family).