Mystery At Midnight

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In 2018, my one-act Mystery At Midnight was a John Cauble finalist at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival region 4 (KCACTF4) and was invited back the next year for a full production.

This is a video of that 2019 production, directed by my multi-talented friend Amile Wilson with a remarkable cast from Jackson State University, an HBCU in Mississippi.

I have to note that, as written, this is a very white play, but this cast of black actors totally committed to the text and brought the characters to life in a way that I never would have envisioned. I just love this iteration. In order of appearance, the cast is:

Michael Barber as Roger Wright
Broderic Simpson as Monty Black
JoeOnna Kidio as Scarlett Starworthy
Nicholas Armstrong as Essex
DeShadrian Hopkins as Cassie Wayne
Ivory Lowe as Joyce
Ramon Davis as Hugh Pearson
Lauren Fleming as Louella Pearson
Amile Wilson as The Sandwich Man

Nadia Bodie-Smith of Jackson State was the Stage Manager and Designer.

I was so impressed with how these young actors produced this play with no money and a tremendous amount of talent and perseverance. I also have to shout out to Todd Ristau and the Hollins Playwrights Lab for making all this possible, and once again, Amile Wilson for his resourcefulness and friendship.

The full script is below, or just watch the 39 minute video and enjoy.

LIGHTS UP ON

It is New Year’s Eve night, December 31, 1939,
a Sunday, at radio station WFRC in Roanoke,
Virginia. The station is located in the old rooftop
ballroom of the Grand Luxe Hotel. A clock on
the wall shows that it is 11:15 PM.
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24/7: Peter and Gina

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For this year’s 24/7 at Live Arts (seven plays written and performed in 24 hours), we playwrights were given the theme Love, American Style, and I was gifted the specific prompt “I have a wooden leg!”. The result below was written overnight and performed just once the next day, March 2 2019.

Thank you to my friend and frequent partner, Leslie Scott-Jones, for taking this mess of a script and turning it into something magical. Kudos to my cast: Michael Swanberg, Jen Bottas, Lee Susen, Jessie Conover, and a special cameo by Browning Porter. Finally, thank you to Live Arts and Ray Nedzel for pulling this crazy event together every year.

The full playscript is below

(WALTER is sitting pensively at a table in a trendy coffee shop, nursing a cup. He has made an attempt to dress nicely. Hovering nearby is PETER, Walter’s penis. When Peter speaks, Walter hears him only subconsciously.)

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Chris and Eve 2018: a Christmas Eve play

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My short play Chris and Eve was performed as part of A Very Special Live Arts Holiday Special, Gibson Theater, December 2018. Starring Misty Vrederburg and Chris Estey, and directed by Ray Nedzel.

This iPhone video capture was made at the December 13 performance. Appended below that is the full script.

(The married couple’s bedroom. EVE is sitting on their bed, staring at an object in her hand. She looks pensive and preoccupied. She is having a moment of silence.)

(CHRIS bursts in, talking a mile a minute and destroying her reverie.)
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The Accidental Victim

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[I was cleaning up some old files and found this short playscript that I wrote way back in 2010. I remember very little about it, but I suspect that it was a writing exercise. This may have been the first thing I wrote when starting down this path of becoming a playwright. It is what it is.]

THE ACCIDENTAL VICTIM

(An office. Two chairs, back to back, face identical desks. NATHAN, a professional looking man in a suit, is on the phone at one desk.)

NATHAN: (on phone) No man, I’m telling you, the Knicks are absolutely gonna take it this year! What? The Bobcats? Are you on crack? (laughing) All right, you are on. You are on! I’ll catch you later.
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Ducky Trumpty’s Fall

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In the summer of 2016, I wrote this little exercise inspired by Humpty Dumpty, turning Donald Trump and friends into essentially a Warner Bros. cartoon. It was a bit of silliness written when Donald Trump was just the clown candidate and we thought he was still funny.

SCENE I

(An overdecorated office with tall windows looking out over a vast landscape. Enter DUCKY TRUMPTY, a duck, and his porcine lackey, HAM HAMMIE.)

TRUMPTY
It’s huge, I tell you. It’s everything I promised it would be. More! This is the most wonderful wall ever built, trust me. It makes that wall in China look like a velvet rope at a Bayonne nightclub. And right here, right on top of the highest point in the wall, my office. An office fit for a king. Or, you know, president. Whatever.

HAMMIE
It’s m…m…magnificent, sir.

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David Bowie calling

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david

The times they are a-telling, and the changing isn’t free

I’ve told a few celebrity encounter stories on this site, so let me say right up front that I don’t know for certain that I spoke to David Bowie on the phone. But I think I might have.

It was the summer of 1984 and I was working in the Melnitz Hall offices on campus of the UCLA Film, Television, and Radio Archives. I had been a work study student in the radio archives before taking the full-time job, and so knew the collection pretty well. When a call came in for the radio archivist and he wasn’t there, the woman at the front desk routed it to me.

On the phone was a man with a very familiar-sounding British accent, asking me about the radio collection. He was particularly interested in radio dramas, so I gave him a partial list of our holdings and invited him to come in and peruse the rest. He was being strangely evasive but continued to keep asking about our sci-fi and BBC radio holdings. Finally, I just broke down and asked him his name.

“This is David Bowie,” he said, without any trace of prevarication.

Oh, I get it, I thought to myself. This was one of my actor friends playing a trick on me, knowing my fondness for the Thin White Duke. So I decided to play along. “Can I call you David?”, I asked. “If you like”, he replied.

I told him about some of our sci-fi and action-adventure holdings, such as Dimension X and Suspense. He also asked about comedy shows and seemed particularly interested in Jack Benny (which struck me as odd).

The entire time I was talking to “David”, I was pretty sure that I must have been actually talking to someone else who was just doing a killer David Bowie impersonation. I invited him again to actually come into the archives in order to browse our collection in person and to listen to shows in which he might be interested.

He took a long and thoughtful pause, and then replied “No, I better not. I’m just here for a little while to see my son. But it’s a secret, you see. The blokes at the Olympics asked me to perform at the opening ceremonies and I told them I couldn’t be in town. Be a good fellow and don’t tell anyone that you spoke with me.”

At that point, I will admit, I started becoming a believer. The 1984 L.A. Olympics were coming up and that seemed a curiously specific detail. He asked me if I had any children, and he spoke a bit about his son and how much he missed him following his divorce from “Zowie’s mum”. We talked for probably a good ten to fifteen minutes. Whoever this man was on the phone, be he David Bowie or some impersonator, seemed genuinely lonely and kind. At the end, he promised to call back in a few months once he had more time on his hands.

I never heard from him again, and nobody ever confessed to me the elaborate practical joke. Now, years later, I still don’t know for certain that I spoke with the actual David Bowie, but I think it’s okay to finally tell this story.