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    Parens.
    Parens.
    Parens.
    Ebook137 pages55 minutes

    Parens.

    By Alexander Danner

    ()

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    About this ebook

    “I will not embellish and I will not romanticize. Frankly, this is simply not a story of romance—it is a story of love. And the two haven’t a thing to do with each other.”

    Winner:
    Phoenix Theatre Playwriting Competition

    Winner:
    City Attic Theatre Playwriting Competition

    Parens. is the story of Brook and William, a wife and husband, the impressionable student and the lover of language, who now speak only through voice recorders, their lives encoded in battles over grammatical ­minutia.

    It is also the story of Eloquence and Bill, the two children who ferry these messages back and forth, always bouncing from one parent to the other, struggling to find their place in a fractured family.

    Weaving forward and back through three pivotal days, Parens. reveals a chain of events that will force Brook and William to finally confront each other, and either reconcile or destroy their family forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlexander Danner
    Release dateMar 14, 2014
    ISBN9781311030665
    Parens.
    Author

    Alexander Danner

    Alexander Danner is a writing of plays, fiction, and graphic novels, as well as two textbooks about graphic novels: Comics: A Global History, 1968 -- Present (Thames & Hudson, 2014) and Character Design for Graphic Novels (Rotovision/Focal Press, 2007). He teaches online courses in writing comics and graphic novels at Emerson College.

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      Book preview

      Parens. - Alexander Danner

      Parens.

      a play 

      Copyright 2009 – 2012, Alexander Danner.

      Published by Alexander Danner at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Production History

      Characters

      Notes for Production

      Dedication

      Act I: Scene 1

      Act I: Scene 2

      Act I: Scene 3

      Act I: Scene 4

      Act I: Scene 5

      Act I: Scene 6

      Act I: Scene 7

      Act II: Scene 1

      Act II: Scene 2

      Act II: Scene 3

      Act II: Scene 4

      Act II: Scene 5

      Act II: Scene 6

      About the Author

      Dedication

      Parens. is dedicated to the memory of

      Betsy Carpenter

      who taught me how to write a play

      and renewed my faith in my own writing.

      Production History

      The first academic performance of Parens., based on an early and abridged draft of the play, was presented at Emerson College’s Semel Theatre on May 1, 2005. The production was directed by Jeff Van Dreason, and featured the following cast:

      Stanley White as William

      Kelly McCabe as Brook

      Zoë Reiniger as Eloquence

      Mike Whitbread as Bill

      Dave Kender as The Math Teacher

      In July of 2006, Parens. was presented in a Play Lab reading at The Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska.

      In October 2006, Parens. received a second academic performance at The University of Victoria, Canada. This production also used an abridged version of the script.

      In July 2007, Parens. received a three-performance staged reading under the direction of Daniel Schay at The Phoenix Theatre, after being selected as a winner of the theatre’s first annual playwriting competition.

      In 2008, Parens. received a staged reading at City Attic Theatre in New York.

      Parens. has never been fully produced in its entirety at any level.

      Characters

      Brook

      (40) A college professor. William’s wife.

      William

      (56) A former college professor. Brook’s husband.

      Eloquence

      (17) Daughter of Brook and William.

      Bill

      (9) Son of Brook and William.

      The Math Teacher

      (24) (Mr. Gordon) A high school math teacher.

      Notes for Production

      1. Parens. is about a family obsessed with the mechanics of the English language, but utterly incapable of connecting on any communicative level. The play explores the differences between technical mastery of language and effective use of language. In an extension of the play’s major theme, the story is structured as a series of nested parenthetical moments. Each scene that opens in the first half is later closed in the second, such that the time of the play runs forward until midway through, at which point the story reverses, and begins moving back toward the beginning of the play. Thus, the final chronological moment of the story takes place in the final scene of Act I.

      2. At the opening of each scene, the scene’s time should be indicated on the whiteboard, using parentheses to help clarify the flow of time within the play. Two methods that work well, depending on the size of the white board in use:

      (11:00AM (1:00PM (2:00PM (4:00 PM (6:00PM) 4:00PM) 2:00PM) 1:00PM) 11:00AM)

      Or: (11:00AM) (1:00PM) (2:00PM) (4:00 PM) (6:00PM)

      Either way, only open parens. should be used in Act I, with the close parens. to come as each hour is completed in Act II. The exception is 6:00PM, which is the final scene of Act I.

      3. The timing of the classroom scenes (Two Days Ago; Yesterday) should be indicated as well, but need not be included in the parenthetical breakdown of the main scenes.

      4. William’s diagram of antidisestablishmentarianism:

      (establish)

      ((establish)ment)

      (((establish)ment)arian)

      ((((establish)ment)arian)ism)

      (dis((((establish)ment)arian)ism))

      anti(dis((((establish)ment)arian)ism))

      5. The Math Teacher’s quadratic equation:

      ax2+bx+c = 0 (quadratic formula)

      x2-3x+2 = 0 (equation to be solved)

      x2-1x-2x+2= x2-3x+2 (factoring the equation, step 1)

      x2-1x-2x+2 = (x-1)(x-2) (factoring the equation, step 2)

      (x-1)(x-2) = 0 (transitive rule)

      a. (x-1) = 0 OR b. (x-2) = 0 (solution)

      Act I: Scene 1

      BROOK enters.

      BROOK

      Once upon a time, there was a man who loved language. He loved the sound of it, the way a few well-chosen syllables could convey a world of meaning. He loved the way it was intricately ordered—transpose only two words, and you altered

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