The Show Might Go On by David Kosh
THE SHOW MIGHT GO ON
Note: This play is to be done in traditional improv style no sets
or props, just four to six bentwood chairs as needed, plus a piano or
keyboard, and someone to play it
The piano plays a spirited tune as EDDIE FITZGERALD enters and
addresses the audience
EDDIE: I was twenty-two in nineteen fifty-five. It was the year
McDonald's and Disneyland opened, the year after Joe McCarthy,
senator, went down, the year before Elvis Presley, king, rose up. In
Chicago, a revolution started with a small "r" more an
accident than a planned assault. It happened in a theatre like
this…with chairs like these…with a director like well, no one
was like Alan, especially in nineteen fifty-five…
He pulls a pair of glasses from his coat pocket, puts them on and a
transformation starts. His movements become stiffer, more awkward
younger
EDDIE: ...It began for me at the University of Chicago. I was sitting
on a bench, angry at ninety-eight percent of everything. Oh, I'm
Eddie…Eddie Fitzgerald.
The change is complete. He's the intellectual, uptight 22-year-old
writer he used to be. He sits, starts to read a book. Two FEMALE
STUDENTS enter and cross behind him. He tries hard to tune out their
conversation
FEMALE STUDENT #1: What de Beauvoir is saying in The Second Sex is
that the female qua Other is a direct result of oppression by
male-dominated society. It has no basis in biological or psychological
factors.
FEMALE STUDENT #2: No basis at all?
FEMALE STUDENT #1: No.
FEMALE STUDENT #2: That is the single most relevant thing I've heard
in my lifetime.
The WOMEN exit. Two MALE STUDENTS enter
MALE STUDENT #1: Since Professor Adler left, this place hasn't been
the same.
MALE STUDENT #2: The barbarians trample on Great Books to jump the
gate.
MALE STUDENT #1: Jimmy's later?
MALE STUDENT #2: "An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk
to spend time with his fools."
MALE STUDENT #1: Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Tolls. We'll get
blottoed.
The MEN exit. MILTON FEDERMAN enters
MILTON (as EDDIE ignores him): Hey, Fitzgerald, I just heard
something. Is it true? Did you quit the Maroon?...I think I'll write
an article headline "Fitzgerald Walks out on Student
Newspaper, Journalistic Credibility to Take His Place."
EDDIE: Go home, Milton. Your mommy is calling you.
MILTON: How brutish and insensitive, Fitzgerald. My mother is dead.
EDDIE: The Maroon isn't all I quit, Milton. I quit everything. I'm
done. I'm finished. I'm an ex-student. You know why? Because the place
is crawling with pedantic and portentous life forms such as yourself.
Now excuse me, I'm reading.
MILTON: If you dropped out, you shouldn't be reading, Eddie. You
should be soaring off a roof with all the other losers crushed by the
big, bad U of C.
EDDIE: You're going to be in my novel, did you know that?
MILTON: Your novel?
EDDIE: As a pestilent dwarf who's ripped apart and eaten by a pack of
feral children. It's a happy ending.
MILTON: The Ain't-Too-Great Gatsby by Eddie "F. Scott I'm Not"
Fitzgerald. I can't wait.
EDDIE: You're jealous.
MILTON: I'm fourteen and a half, I just finished my master's thesis,
and I'm
EDDIE (waving his book): You're jealous because I'm an inner-directed
man like Riesman says right here in The Lonely Crowd, and you, along
with all the other overdeveloped toddlers who infest this absurd
excuse for a university, are just part of the warmth-seeking herd.
MILTON (snickering): Warmth-seeking
EDDIE: Goodbye, little man, I have a novel to write.
Eddie starts to march off, but MILTON's snickering is too much to
take
EDDIE: You Milton, are irrefutable proof that God doesn't exist!...
(to audience) ...God, I hate him.
MILTON: Since you've just asserted that divinity doesn't exist, your
exhortation to same is not only specious, it's
EDDIE: Shut up!
MILTON storms offstage
EDDIE (to audience): Damn, I hate him…And you know what? I don't
have a novel I do, I mean I have one, a real one, a good one,
maybe a great one, up there with Proust and Joyce and but it's
trapped, trapped in a swamp of neuronal sludge and it won't, won't,
won't…
EDDIE slumps in a chair. A FEMALE STUDENT and a MALE STUDENT enter
FEMALE STUDENT #1: Come on, let's check on the board, see what's up
there… (reading notices)... Look at this "Smith-Corona
portable with umlaut and half-space, bargain price."
MALE STUDENT #1: What about this one? "Share driving expenses to New
Orleans for Mardi Gras."
FEMALE STUDENT #1: Forget that. Listen to this
"REVOLUTION!"...
This catches EDDIE's attention
FEMALE STUDENT #1: ..."Want to change the world? New theatre of
improvisation starting. Confront Alan Beckman at the Park West
Luncheonette. Today. Four p.m."
EDDIE leaps up, squeezes between the two students, grabs the notice
EDDIE: Excuse me, excuse me…
The STUDENTS laugh, exit, as EDDIE studies the notice
MALE STUDENT #1: Vive la revolution!
EDDIE sets up the chairs as he addressed the audience
EDDIE: Revolution at the Park West Luncheonette!
Blackout. When the lights come up again, we're at the Park West
Luncheonette. Bentwood chairs serve as a booth, table, etc.
KAREN LINZER, the waitress, profoundly bored, sits at what would be
the end of the counter
EDDIE enters with the notice in his hand, sits down, waits for KAREN
to come over. She doesn't
EDDIE: Hey, aren't you going to ask me if I want something?
KAREN: Do you want something?
EDDIE: No, I just came in to take a nap.
KAREN: Okay.
EDDIE: I'd like a cup of coffee.
KAREN: You want cream with that?
EDDIE: Yes.
KAREN: It's kind of old. I'll make some fresh.
EDDIE: The cream?
KAREN: No.
KAREN exits. ALAN BECKMAN enters behind EDDIE. He strides up to him
and plucks the notice out of his hand
EDDIE: Hey!
ALAN: "Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold."
EDDIE: Huh?
ALAN: Shakespeare. As You Like It.
EDDIE (regarding the notice): I intend to put it back. I just
ALAN: I posted this notice, this warning, this blast from Joshua's
trumpet, more than two weeks ago. No one has felt the call until now.
I applaud you, sir. It isn't easy to pull away from the sleeping
herd.
EDDIE: The herd! Exactly. Alan Beckman?
ALAN: A form of him.
EDDIE: I'm Eddie…Eddie Fitzgerald.
ALAN peers at EDDIE's extended hand, then shakes it
EDDIE: I'm I'm a writer. Do you need a writer for this
ALAN: Theatre of improvisation.
EDDIE: Yes. Do you
ALAN: We need everyone bricklayers, doctors, steelworkers.
Writers. A truly representative theatre, that's the goal.
EDDIE: It sounds like a really interesting thing, a theatre that
ALAN: Why?
EDDIE: Why is it interesting? Or why do I find it interesting?
ALAN: Just say whatever comes to you.
EDDIE: Well, in an other-directed society, tradition gets lost and
people have to learn to improvise a whole new way of life. Since
theatre is supposed to represent life, and if that life is improvised,
then
ALAN: Cards on the table, Eddie. What is it you want?
EDDIE: What do I want?
ALAN: You come to me, to my theatre…you want something.
EDDIE: I want to know something about it.
ALAN: Come on, Eddie. Do you want to be rich? Famous? Maybe you want
to screw an actress.
EDDIE: Well, I I…I really don't know.
KAREN returns with coffee and cream
KAREN: Fresh coffee and fresh cream…Hello, Alan.
ALAN: How are you?
KAREN: Fine.
ALAN: Really?
KAREN: I guess so. I think. Can I get you something?
ALAN: No thanks…Eddie, this is Karen Linzer. Karen, this is Eddie
Fitzgerald.
KAREN (extending her hand): Nice to meet you, Eddie.
ALAN (as EDDIE shakes KAREN's hand): Karen's an actress, Eddie.
ALAN's pointed gaze makes EDDIE cut the handshake short
ALAN: She'll be part of our theatre… (to KAREN)... Eddie's a writer
trying to find out what he wants.
KAREN: A writer. Are you coming to the workshop?
EDDIE: Workshop?
KAREN: We work on Alan's ideas. Improvisations and
ALAN: If Eddie decides that is what he wants, he'll be there. Would
you mind if he and I talked privately? I think he needs that.
KAREN: Sure.
She exits
EDDIE: She's an actress?... (as ALAN nods)... Why does she work here?
ALAN: Life isn't easy for a woman alone. And she has a little boy to
support.
EDDIE: She has a kid? A widow?
ALAN: Divorce. The husband tried, but could not stay with them. They
were a vital stage in his growth, he'll always be grateful for that.
And who knows? Fate is strange. Perhaps they'll meet at some higher
turning of the road.
EDDIE: ...This husband…He's around here somewhere?
ALAN: A writer is like a detective, right, Eddie? You have ascertained
correctly. I, in fact, am he. Now let's get back to you. What do you
think about the theatre?
EDDIE: ...Well…I enjoy it. Very much. I've always
ALAN: That's bullshit. There isn't any theatre. How can you enjoy
something that doesn't exist?
EDDIE: But there does exist a medium of expression which, in the
common parlance, is known and referred to as "the theatre."
ALAN: And Joe McCarthy has been known and referred to as "a
lawmaker." Theatre is supposed to reflect life now, in the present
tense, not bore us with how people used to act, think, feel that's
what museums are for. The world is changing. History is obsolete. If
it isn't present tense, it isn't theatre. Do you see that, Eddie?
EDDIE: Well…
ALAN: It's been a rotten day in Chicago, Hog Butcher of the World.
Your boss humiliated you, you discovered your wife having sex with the
paperboy, and you just found out the city wants to bulldoze your house
and replace it with a parking lot. Then you walk into a theatre and
look up onstage and it's all there, the boss, the wife, the parking
lot. Your whole crappy life is up there, but it's transformed. It's
exalted. It's art. And you see. You see that the life you think is
garbage isn't at all. It's a diamond. A diamond among billions of
others, all of them sparkling with the glory and suffering that is
humanity.
EDDIE: That would be fantastic! But would it work? And how could I
I mean a writer be part of it?
ALAN: Ultimately there'll be no writers, no directors, not even any
actors. The audience will come to the theatre by itself and make up
its own show. But that's far ahead of us, and right now we must take
the first step, which is to have writers give us ideas and let the
actors bring them to life in their own words.
EDDIE: So the writer has to come up with a…a kind of scenario.
ALAN: A scenario…That's a good name for it. Do you have one?
EDDIE: Me? Now?... (shaking his head)... But I will. I'll work on it
tonight.
ALAN: And present it at the workshop tomorrow.
EDDIE: Tomorrow?
ALAN: You don't happen to have ten thousand dollars, do you Eddie?
EDDIE: No, I'm sorry.
JENNIFER ENGSTROM enters with a scream as JERRY CZYRKO and VINCE
TANNER enter right after, stalking her. EDDIE whirls around. KAREN
enters to see what's going on
JENNIFER (fake Spanish accent): Please, please, señor. Haven't you
squeezed me enough?
VINCE: Not only am I going to squeeze you some more, my little
banaña, I'm going to peel you, too. And then I'm going to bake you
into bread.
JERRY: And I'm gonna back him up real good, I am, just like Mr. Dulles
told me to.
JENNIFER: Dios mio! Dios mio!
VINCE and JERRY grab JENNIFER, then immediately break the "scene"
and look to ALAN
JERRY: What do you think? I'm the CIA, Vince is United Fruit
JENNIFER: And I'm the people of Guatemala.
VINCE: We've got another one. Watch, watch… (to JENNIFER)... So,
Little Orphan Annie, tell me what you and Sandy have learned today.
JENNIFER: Leapin' Lizards, Daddy Warbucks, we learned that patriotism
is the last refuge of scoundrels!
VINCE: No, no, no! Try it again.
JENNIFER: The only good red is a dead red?
VINCE: My girl!
JERRY: Arf!
JENNIFER crosses to ALAN, throws her arms around him
JENNIFER: Can we work on them tomorrow?
ALAN: Actually, we're going to work on something else…This is Eddie
Fitzgerald, our new writer. He's going to create a scenario for us. To
provide shelter from the creative storm.
JERRY: A scenario…Cool.
JENNIFER: What's it about?
EDDIE: Uh…
ALAN: We'll find out tomorrow at the workshop.
JERRY: Jerry Czyrko, man.
He grabs EDDIE's hand, gives it a tremendous shake. VINCE attacks
EDDIE's hand as soon as JERRY lets it go
VINCE: Vince Tanner.
JENNIFER: Jennifer.
She, too, offers her hand. A regal shake
EDDIE: Nice to meet you.
ALAN: All right, everybody. Let's go.
ALAN and the others start to exit. EDDIE follows, but ALAN stops him
ALAN: Not you, Eddie. We've spoken many words. Now it's time for you
to listen to them.
EDDIE: Right, right. I'll just stay here and listen.
ALAN: Tomorrow at seven.
EDDIE: Seven, okay. Is that p.m.?
JENNIFER: Alan never wakes up before noon.
VINCE: Catch ya, Eddie.
JERRY: Arf.
EDDIE: Arf…right.
ALAN, VINCE and JERRY exit. JENNIFER waves at KAREN
JENNIFER: Hi, Karen, bye, Karen.
KAREN: I liked your people of Guatemala.
JENNIFER: Really?...What about Orphan Annie?
KAREN: I liked that too.
JENNIFER beams, exits. EDDIE leaps up.
EDDIE: Oh no, no…
KAREN: What, what?
EDDIE: He didn't tell me where it is.
KAREN: Where what is?
EDDIE: The workshop. He didn't
KAREN: I can tell you, Eddie.
EDDIE: Oh…yes. Of course.
KAREN leads EDDIE to a window. Points outside
KAREN: There it is, right across the street.
EDDIE: Where?
KAREN gazes out, unaware of how close to EDDIE she's standing. It's
the opposite with him. Boy, is he aware
KAREN: The storefront, there. There's our theatre. Okay?
She exits. EDDIE addresses the audience
EDDIE: Interesting girl… (setting up the chairs)... Let's go to the
lobby of the Park West Hotel…