The Word: Workhaus Collective, 9 Playwrights, 9 Plays

Written exclusively for METRO.

Image credit: mnartists.org

Recommended by the Editor

Third Annual Keeper Awards

The Commission: 'Reconcile'

By: Workhaus Collective |   February 2011   |  From the print edition

Playwrights: 1 Dominic Orlando, 2 Carson Kreitzer, 3 Cory Hinkle, 4 Deborah Stein, 5 Christina Ham, 6 Jeannine Coulombe, 7 Victoria Stewart, 8 Trista Baldwin, 9 Alan Berks

See the videos produced by the collective based on this commission here.

Workhaus Collective is a collective of Minneapolis-based playwrights. WC is presenting A Short Play about 9/11 by Dominic Orlando, September 9-24, 2011; Flesh and the Desert by Carson Kreitzer, January 19-28, 2012; and The Mill by Jeannine Coulombe, April 18- May 5, 2012.

1

YOU HAVE LANDED ON AN ACTION SQUARE!

(you must choose one or forfeit)

1)Accept Who You Are & What You Have

2)Acknowledge Your Relative Privilege & Risk Inadequate Health Care for the Promise of an Adventurous Life

3)Review All Major Life Decisions Beginning With Your First Kiss

4)Go Back 3 Spaces & Roll Again

Principatus * Professio Pro Nostrum Sake

2

homage to andy. screen test

music. one is covering a surface with tinfoil . rapt in concentration.

one stares into the camera. her image, projected large. honest, not fidgety. her eyes draw you in, deeper and deeper, until you think you understand her.

one dances with a whip. he is almost as pretty as she is.

they move slow, like we’ve forgotten people can move.

3

Performance for a summer night*

Properties:

The Midwest, a mother, a sprinkler, wet grass, a setting sun, the sound of cicadas, the cries of children, a father in a lawn chair, the smell of cigarettes, a brother, a sister, the sound of feet running, some glass jars, and fireflies, a night sky full of them.

1. grab a glass jar.

2. catch a firefly.

3. put glass jar over firefly.

4. repeat 1, 2, and 3 until exhausted.

*can be performed on any night, during any season, but performer should picture either real or imagined past summer nights.

4

A SQUARE.

WRITER’S VOICE:

This square thinks it’s a real comedian.

SQUARE:

What? Do you know a lot of squares?

WRITER’S VOICE:

Is that supposed to be a joke?

(Awkward pause.)

SQUARE:

It would be funnier if you were a square.

(Awkward pause.)

WRITER’S VOICE:

See what I mean?

5

The Blank Page

8 1/2 x 11

(usually)

1” margins

(always)

white

(mostly)

possibilities

(infinite)

6

A precipice facing a lake. A deep gulch below. Two sisters. Sixties. Their mother. Nineties. A bottle of ashes. A bottle of Windsor Canadian. Silence.

Sister: Breathtaking view.

Other: Richie planned it that way.

Silence. A shot of whiskey. A spreading of ashes into the gulch. Silence. Sisters gone. Mother leaning on her cane. Fighting the uneven ground. Winning. The wind reeking of ash. A kiss. Silence.

7

a man and woman drink martinis in a well-furnished apartment.

she’s had a few.

SHE: -And after he broke up with me, he won’t see me, he won’t talk to me, he acts like I’m a psycho bitch-

he looks around uncomfortably. he tries to change the subject.

HE: I didn’t know you moved.

SHE: This is his apartment; I just broke in.

the sound of a key in the lock.

8

ModernAnxiety. Fluorescents. Typing, office noise. Also a long stretch of highway. Windshield wipers, news radio. MAN behind the wheel of a car, blue-faced, Blackberry in hand. WOMAN in passenger eyes nervously as HE texts, SHE texts, applies mascara in the car mirror. “What do you mean you don’t know where it is?” How will we get there. What is there. Why is there. Fog. WOMAN’s skin peels away, her blood shocked by the elements. MAN drives headlong into the imminent—

9

let me out