JAC Publishing & Promotions Description Page

The Butterfly Within by Thomas M. Kelly

#2005-0038

ISBN #1-933159-42-1

(See also Thomas Kelly's one-act FANA! and full-lengths ...smile, and smile, and be a villain and Ba-Bang!)

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Cast Requirements:

	FYVUSH (fie-voush) GLICK: An elderly Jewish gentleman, 70-75, with Yiddish accent. He has recently lost his wife to suicide.
	MITZI/MYUNG (mmyoong)-SOOK: A young Korean girl 18-20, Artist. Very Americanized appearance: Red brilliant hair, sunglasses, clothing of her own design and color, constantly hooked up to cd player. Secretly indulges in traditional Korean dances, culture, language, etc.
	GERMAN OFFICER (Voice-over)
	OLD MAN (Voice-over)
	FYVUSH, age 10-12 in early childhood sequence.
	TEVI, age 10-12 in early childhood sequence.
	TEVI, age 17 in violin solo.
	ZELDA, age 19 in Mitzvah dance scene.
	ZELDA, age 64 in one of her “episodes”; Doubles as Myung-Sook’s Grandmother, age 64 and “Ghost” in Mitzi’s butterfly mask dance.

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Setting

On the rooftop of a once rundown tenement in New York City. Center stage is a skylight. Behind it is a handrail for a fire escape. Stage left is a metal smokestack. Plumbing and vent pipes abound. The stage is surrounded by a capped, low brick wall, (not higher than 2 feet), which is the top of the building. Stage right is a covered staircase with a door for entrances and exits. Typical tenements included 20 3-room apartments, typical of their kinds, were arranged four to a floor, two in front and two in the rear. An unlighted ventilated wooden staircase that ran through the center of the building reached the apartments. The largest room (11' x 12'6") was referred to in plans as the living room or parlor, but residents called it the "front room." Behind it came the kitchen and one tiny bedroom. The entire flat, which often contained households of seven or more people, totaled about 325 square feet.

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Synopsis

In 1966, Fyvush moved his family and his bookstore to Long Island. After the death of his beloved wife, Zelda, Fyvush, returns to the playground of his youth: the rooftop of a rundown tenement on the Lower East Side of New York City. There he finds, among the many changes in his old neighborhood, Mitzi, a eighteen-year-old Korean college student with red hair, sunglasses, hooked up to a cd player, painting sunsets, and demanding that he leave her 'playground'. They eventually grow to tolerate each other’s company and Fyvush shares stories of his rooftop experiences. They soon discover that they have a great deal in common: each has something to hide. Fyvush despondent over his wife's suicide, also contemplates suicide and Mitzi's apparent rejection of all things Korean, finds inner peace secretly dancing traditional Korean mask dances, while on the streets below she struggle to find her place in American society.

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Props
Act I—Scene One

	Fyvush: Paper/styrofoam teacup
	Mitzi/Myung-Sook: Bag with art supplies, easel, folding stool, CD player w/headphones

Act I—Scene Two

Fyvush: Two paper/styrofoam teacups, wind-up record player, two records (78 RPM: Klezmer and Swing

Mitzi/Myung-Sook: Bag with art supplies, easel, folding stool, CD player w/headphones, a notebook

Act I—Scene Three

	Fyvush: Paper/styrofoam teacup, white paper back containing a bagel with cream cheese, an old photo album, a letter from the Austrian government
	Fyvush and Tevi (age 10-12): Water balloons
	Mitzi/Myung-Sook: Bag with art supplies, easel, folding stool, CD player w/headphones, CD “boom box”, CD of Korean Butterfly dance

Costumes

	Fyvush: Same conservative suit (at least 30 years old) throughout
	Mitzi/Myung-Sook: Four changes from scene to scene; Butterfly costume with mask

Author Biography

Thomas M. Kelly is the owner and Artistic director of the award-winning Thistle Dew Theatre, and founder of the Thistle Dew Playwright’s Workshop. Local awards: Several “Elly” nominations and two Elly Awards: Best Overall Production for A Shayna Madel and best Set for Nighthawks and Night Caf�, based on the painting “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper.

He has written and produced many children’s plays. They feature Charlie (Prince Charlemagne de Coquille), a French Briard puppy, and Jay (Jaida de les Etoiles), a Persian Red Point feline” This is not our backyard, Charlie, You’re in trouble now, Charlie, and Wake up, Jay! It’s Christmas!, 2006 winner of four local Elly Awards for Young People’s Theatre including Best Overall production.

Kelly’s honors: The Butterfly Within is included in the Eileen Heckart Senior Drama Archives in the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University.

JAC Publishing & Promotions has published three of Kelly’s plays:

	The Butterfly Within (A heartwarming story of culture clash as an old Jewish gentlemen and a young Korean girl discover the meaning of the rest of their lives atop a Lower East Side tenement);
	Fana! (The ordeal of three trapped survivors of suicide bomb blasts who spend their last hours justifying their lives and religions: two very honestly; the third very deceitfully. In a mental duel, the three argue the rationale of murder/suicide bombings using the Qur’an, Hindu philosophy and the Torah as authority.); and
	smile, and smile, and be a villain (A frightening glimpse at the life of a victim of Borderline Personality Disorder).
	Ba-Bang! A Political Cartoon Play

Some of Kelly’s other works:

Ole’ Gimlet Eye is a biographical play about Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, U.S.M.C. A man who defied the powers that were to wage a war against war in the days before World War II: “War is a racket! I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” In the 1930s, he revealed to the then ill President Roosevelt a scheme to replace him. Roosevelt, with a “Presidential Assistant” by a conglomerate of financiers, bankers and industrialists, and he, Butler, would be appointed as the new “Dictator.”

Zen and the Art of Making Par, Extreme Unction and How to Improve Your Life in Four Easy Moves are more recent, full-length and one-act plays.