Seneca Hollow Rescue

Adam LeFevre
Premiere: Actors & Writers, New Paltz, New York, 1991 Publisher: Setting: Seneca Hollow Volunteer Rescue Squad Headquarters Mona is married to George, a volatile mechanic in his mid-forties who works for the local Volunteer Rescue Squad. Her father died recently, and she is in an extremely fragile emotional state. George doesn't know how to cope with her grief and thinks she is having a breakdown. Mona's main support has been a young minister named Lane. She tells him, "You have such a beautiful face. A saint's face. It shines. I wish you hadn't stopped coming by. You would listen. In the longest silence, you would still keep listening." The play begins with Lane passing his Volunteer Rescue Squad test by correctly diagnosing a Resucit-Annie doll's brain hemorrhage. As the squad members celebrate, Mona bursts in wild-eyed, babbling about an old man who fell out of the sky while she was gardening. She tells the squad he needs help: "This is the real thing! Code red!" George thinks she is "seeing things," but to calm her down he agrees to take the ambulance out to the site. He's joined by senior squad member Ace, leaving Lane to look after Mona. They will find out that Mona is telling the truth. An old man lies collapsed in the pole beans. When he finally comes to, he says he's an angel who fell from a tree. If he is an angel, he's certainly past his prime: his memory is shot and his laying on of hands no longer heals. But Mona believes in him. To George, this is proof that she's losing her grip. In this scene, the ambulance has just left and Mona and Lane are alone. She tells Lane she misses his visits. He asks if she's still praying, and says that he knows her father is in God's hands. She wants to believe him.

MONA I'm trying, Lane. I'm trying so hard. I couldn't sleep last night. I kept thinking about Daddy, riding with him in the back of the ambulance to the hospital, how his face looked so mean. He kept saying "Leave me alone. I'm turnin' into nothin', and I'm happy about it." I went outside. It was light from the moon. I walked way out into Blaisdell's pastures, sat down on a rock, closed my eyes, and I tried to pray. I asked God to give me a sign Daddy was all right, that he was somewhere. I sat like that for I don't know how long. When I opened up, there was all these cows around me, staring. Curious, I guess. I looked up into their eyes, so big and tender there in the moonlight, and I thought maybe God was trying to speak to me through the eyes of those cows. But I couldn't believe it. They were just stupid cows. They ran away when I clapped my hands. I just walked home. It musta been 4 A.M. I still couldn't get sleepy, so I paced around downstairs, around the love-

seat, around and around, singing to myself. "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." That's the song Daddy used to sing me when I was little and couldn't sleep. So I sang it to myself. (She sings.) Row, row, row your boat. It woke Georgey up. He's worried about my mind.

Hurlyburly
David Rabe
Premiere: Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Illinois, 1984 Publisher: Samuel French, Inc. Setting: An upscale house in the Hollywood Hills Phil is an unstable, out-of-work Hollywood actor in the throes of a marital crisis. As his casting director friend Eddie

describes it, "you two are in the middle of this bloodbath the goddamn climactic go-round of your seven-year career in, you know what I mean, marital carnage." Phil's wife, Susie, thinks having a baby together will save their marriage, and Phil, who already has three children by a failed marriage, is not so sure. Unable to face his wife's desperation, he is pretending to try to get her pregnant while

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taking a drug that renders his sperm ineffective. Phil has come to Eddie's house for comfort and advice. Both men are heavy before-breakfast users of cocaine, weed, and bourbon. Eddie has just advised Phil, "All I'm sayin' is, don't have a baby thoughtlessly." PHIL Eddie, for god sake, don't terrify me that you have paid no attention! If I was thoughtless would I be here? I feel like I have pushed thought to the brink where it is just noise and of no more use than a headful of car horns, because the bottom line here that I'm getting at is just thisI got to go back to her. I got to go back to Susie, and if it means havin' a kid, I got to do it. I mean, I have hit a point where I am going round the bend several times a day now, and so far I been on the other side to meet me, but one a these days it might be one time too many, and who knows who might be there waitin'? If not me, who? I'm a person, Eddie, and I have realized it, who needs like a big-dot-thing, you knowthis big-dot-thing around which I can just hang and blab my thoughts and more or less formulate everything as I go, myself included. I mean, I used to spend my days in my car; I didn't know what the fuck I was doin' but it kept me out of trouble until nothin' but blind luck led me to I-am-married, and I could go home. She was my big-dot-thing. Now I'm startin' in my car again, I'm spendin' days on the freeways and rain or no rain I like the wipers clickin', and all

around me the other cars got people in em the way I see 'em when they are in cars. These heads, these faces. These boxes of steel with glass and faces inside. I been the last two days without seeing another form of human being in his entirety except gas station attendants. The family men in the day with their regular food and regular hours in their eyes. And then in the night, these moonlighters; they could be anything. In the wee hours of the morning, it's derelicts, and these weird spooky kids like they have recently arrived from outer space, but not to

stay. The cloverleafs, they got a thing in them, it spins me off. There's little back roads and little towns sometimes I never heard of them. I start to expect the gas station attendants to know me when I arrive. I get excited that I've been there before. I want them to welcome me. I'm disappointed when they don't. Something that I don't want to be true starts lookin' like it's all that's true only I don't know what it is. No. No. I need my marriage. I come here to tell you. I got to stay married. I'm lost without her.