...smile,
and smile, and be a villain
by Thomas M. Kelly
#2006-0029
ISBN #1-933159-79-0
(See also Thomas Kelly's one-act FANA! and full-lengths ...smile, and smile, and be a villain
and The Butterfly Within!)
Cast Requirements:
 | SARA BLOTZ: 30-35 years old, transplant from Croton-on-Hudson, New
York to Atlanta, Georgia. She is a childhood friend of Luci. Consequently she speaks with
a mixture of Georgia drawl and New York accent. Sara displays rapidly shifting and shallow
expression of emotions. She will consistently use her physical appearance to draw
attention to herself. She has a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and
lacking in detail, showing self-dramatization, theatricality, and exaggerated expression
of emotion and authority in areas she is inexperienced. She is, at most times, nasty,
cruel and demeaning. She has difficulty controlling her anger and will lash out at anyone
unless she feels that person can help her in her agenda.. She is suggestible, i.e., easily
influenced by circumstances. She considers relationships to be more intimate than they
actually are, and that they can be fleeting if for a purpose, usually until she has
attained what she wants. She frantically avoids real or imagined abandonment. She may
experience anxiety, usually lasting a few minutes to a few hours. Once that person denies,
or reneges on, a promise to help, she will lash out in retribution. Sara will often show
inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty in controlling anger with frequent displays of
temper. She may express strong opinions with dramatic flair, but her underlying reasons
are usually vague and diffuse, without supporting facts or details. Sara seeks to control
her partner, be it Edgar, her former husband, or Jerry, her husband, through emotional
manipulation or seductiveness on one level, whereas displaying a marked dependency on them
on another level. She wants to be seen as fragile and dependent to Jerry if this is
instrumental in getting attention or her will. Sara will use deceit, repeated lying,
and/or aliases to attain what she wants. She is impulsive in her spending habits, her
sexual partners, and substance abuse. She is an undiagnosed borderline personality
disorder victim. |
| JERRY BLOTZ: 30-35 years old, husband of SARA,
native of Atlanta, Georgia. Speaks with Georgia drawl. Jerry is a typical male, except
that he is a computer/tech geek. Unaware, at the time of their marriage, that Sara is
manipulating him for her own needs; he is flattered that a beautiful woman has consented
to marry him. But Jerry has his own problems, he is obsessive compulsive: he likes his
toys. |
| LUCILLE (LUCI) ROSENBERG: 30-35 years old. She is a native of
Croton-on-Hudson, New York where she is an attorney with successful family law practice.
Luci has not seen Sara, her childhood friend, since her wedding to Edgar Hershowitz in
Atlanta seven years ago. There only contact has been through email and an occasional
greeting card. Luci and Phil did not attend Sara and Jerry’s wedding three years ago. |
| PHIL ROSENBERG: Husband of Luci, 35-40 years old, native of New
York City, playwright, and screenwriter turned standup comedian. Other than what Luci has
told him, Phil does not know much about either Sara or Jerry. Phil has his own problems.
He is a very selfish person, a workaholic and anal when it comes to the proper use of the
English language, his dress, and the environment: specifically, waste of natural assets
such as water and air. I use him here as something of a know-it-all stand-up comedian. |
| JONAH and ELIJAH HERSHOWITZ: (v.o.) Sons of the marriage of Sara
and Edgar. |
Setting
1950's-style kitchen
Synopsis
Phil, a journalist turned novelist, turned playwright, turned
near-do-well wanna-be stand-up comedian, agrees to take a comedy gig in Atlanta, Georgia,
which gives Luci, his wife, a chance to visit her high school friend, Sara, and her
husband of four years, Jerry. They have arrived by train from New York City and will
return Sunday. Upon their arrival Phil realizes that Sara is a ‘goldmine’ of
material for his act. He antagonizes and engages Sara in what appear to be playful
confrontations, but all the while he is stirring the pot to gather material: until the
situation turns dangerous.
Luci, an attorney with a successful family law practice in New York,
discovers that Sara is trying to convince her to advise her and to take her case involving
her legal fight with her former husband over the custody of their two boys, Jonah and
Elijah. However, with Sara’s undiagnosed borderline personality disorder, which
includes obnoxious attitude of superiority, narcissism, fear of abandonment, histrionics
and threatened suicides, she continues to create heated confrontations with the people
whom she loves and needs. Sara will not admit that she has a mental problem. She abuses
her credit accounts. She has a history of drug and alcohol abuse. She moves from one job
to another (usually fired) to avoid process servers.
Jerry immerses himself in his computer programming company, refusing to
participate in decision-making regarding their marriage, their lifestyle, and the
maintenance of their house. Luci refuses to help Sara. Sara, in an effort to call
attention to herself and get her way, takes the children in a contrived attempt to move
out of state. The end result is that when she feels she has lost control of the situation,
she terrorizes and beats the children, and uses her husband’s pistol to finally
commit the oft-threatened suicide. Using Sara as the source of his material, Phil has
revealed that he is also a borderline personality, but of a different sort. |
Online purchases are for single script purchases only
and include $3 S&H. For more than one script or a script package, please call us
at (781) 272-2066
 |
| $6/individual
copy
$35/package +
$35/performance royaltyP |
|
|
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 Café,
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 the following Kelly 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.
|
|
