Monday, November 27, 2017

November 2017 Writing Challenge - #27 - Children's Theater


Folks. I’m hurting. Ha! Tech and ASL and new play and actor who drama all in one. 

Sorry

This one is Childrens Theater 

What’s the difference? You can NOT have a fourth wall and must open the possible truths available with reduced complexity but not beauty 

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Just waiting for the call to be posted.

Still working through the reworking, streamlining and additional material of making the previous Jeffrey and Duncan posts into something more akin real scenes I can use in the context of the other plotlines.

here's part two of three, today's assignment

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The wiccan supply store.

DUNCAN finishes a call and hangs up, smiling.

                          JEFFREY
That sounded like a good call.

                          DUNCAN
It was.  A very good call.  We have the final ingredient.

                          JEFFREY
Where do I go to get it?

                          DUNCAN
Nowhere.  Right here.  They had a delivery truck coming to our charming little town today anyway.  It's already in transit as we speak.  Should be here this afternoon.

                          JEFFREY
You're a lifesaver.

                          DUNCAN
This mean I get a date out of it?

                          JEFFREY
Well, I was hoping to get a date out of this anyway, regardless.  We don't have to make it conditional on anything.

                          DUNCAN
So why'd you want to make him happy?

                          JEFFREY
Who?

                          DUNCAN
Your friend, who you gave the potion to.

                          JEFFREY
Micah.

                          DUNCAN
You said you did it to make him happy.

                          JEFFREY
Well, it didn't work out as planned.

                          DUNCAN
But why'd you do it in the first place?

                          JEFFREY
I've sort of been crushing on him for a while, so -

                          DUNCAN
So why not just give it to him, instead, for yourself?

                          JEFFREY
Colossal failure of nerve?

                          DUNCAN
You handed it off to him, so he could turn around and use it on someone else instead.

                          JEFFREY
Idiot move, I know.

                          DUNCAN
Even if you were second choice, you didn't want to force it?

                          JEFFREY
Well, his first choice was a straight, married guy whose wife is pregnant.  I don't think that counts as an actual first choice.

                          DUNCAN
It does if you give him a love potion, he uses it, and it works.

                          JEFFREY
No one likes to be second choice.

                          DUNCAN
No.  They don't.

                          JEFFREY
So, about that date -

                          DUNCAN
You know, I don't like being second choice either.

                          JEFFREY
You're not.  I mean, it's not as if I have any other viable options right now, so you're first choice.

                          DUNCAN
By default.  You're a real charmer.

                          JEFFREY
Duncan -

                          DUNCAN
There are so many things wrong with this, I can't believe you'd encourage him.

                          JEFFREY
You haven't seen them together.

                          DUNCAN
I don't need to.  Auggie is straight, and married, and his wife's pregnant.  Jesus, take a hint.
You want him to be miserable?

                          JEFFREY
No, of course not.  Why do you think I gave him the love potion in the first place?

                          DUNCAN
Apparently because you were too chickenshit to use it on the guy you wanted to, a guy who was at least actually gay to begin with.

                          JEFFREY
So that would have been all right?

                          DUNCAN
No, but currently you're just playing into every conservative religious person's stereotypical gay nightmare.

                          JEFFREY
And which nightmare is that exactly?  They have so many.  They're obsessed with us.

                          DUNCAN
The one where we gay men are constantly prowling around, looking to convert unsuspecting straight men.  Enough guys do what Micah did, they set the movement back fifty years.

                          JEFFREY
Not everything is about gay civil rights.

                          DUNCAN
We don't have the luxury of being careless.

                          JEFFREY
Oh, so as long as we're good little boys, stick to our own kind, they'll leave us alone?  You know better than that.

                          DUNCAN
But why provoke people with a stunt like this?

                          JEFFREY
We are actively working to undo this as quickly as possible.
Micah is not taking advantage of Auggie. I'd be surprised to hear he laid a finger on him.

                          DUNCAN
Damage is done, buddy.

                          JEFFREY
Look, I made a mistake, he made a mistake.

                          DUNCAN
Drugging somebody is a little more than a mistake.

                          JEFFREY
So you're going to turn us into the police.

                          DUNCAN
Right.  Because they'd believe this situation was actually happening.
Why would you just wait around for someone to change their mind?

                          JEFFREY
I'm not just waiting around.  He's my friend.  Friends spend time together.

                          DUNCAN
You gave him a love potion he used on someone else.  Again, take a hint.

                          JEFFREY
So what exactly do you do?

                          DUNCAN
What exactly - ?

                          JEFFREY
When you like somebody, you know, rather than just wait around for them to change their mind, what do you do?

                          DUNCAN
I tell them I like them, I ask for their phone number, I engage them in conversation, I assume they don't need to be hit over the head.

                          JEFFREY
This is new for me.

                          DUNCAN
What?

                          JEFFREY
Being the one someone is interested in.

                          DUNCAN
Well, it's fading fast if you don't get your act together.

                          JEFFREY
And what exactly would constitute getting my act together?

                          DUNCAN
"An it harm none, do what ye will."

                          JEFFREY
What's with the ye olde Englishe all of a sudden?

                          DUNCAN
OK - And if it harms none, do what you will.

                          JEFFREY
I understood you the first time, I just -

                          DUNCAN
If you're ever wondering what you should do, as a Wiccan, hopefully you ask yourself the question, "How can I cause the least harm?"

                          JEFFREY
And - ?

                          DUNCAN
Did you ask yourself any questions at all?  Did you consider the harm you might be doing?

                          JEFFREY
But I didn't do anything.

                          DUNCAN
Not directly, no.  Actually what you did was worse.  You handed off a love potion when you weren't entirely sure what it was going to do, to a person who knew even less about what he was doing than you did.

                          JEFFREY
Are you actually angry with me right now?

                          DUNCAN
Yes.  Because I want to think you're better than that.  I want to think I'm attracted to people who are better than that.  But it seems like every pretty surface just has a moron underneath it.

                          JEFFREY
I am battling right now between being mad that you called me a moron, and thrilled that you called me pretty.

                          DUNCAN
You have irreparably damaged their friendship.  Your friend and his best friend.  There's no going back after this.  The trust has been violated in a way I'm not sure they can ever get past.  Not to mention his pregnant wife.

                          JEFFREY
Yeah, that's bad.  I get that.

                          DUNCAN
Did you get it before you gave him the love potion in the first place?

                          JEFFREY
What?

                          DUNCAN
Did you actually think - this either isn't going to work, or if it does, it's going to end up driving a wedge between them and then maybe Micah will see me as the only alternative he has left.

                          JEFFREY
Wow.  You are way overthinking this.

                          DUNCAN
Which means you're underthinking it.

                          JEFFREY
I just wanted him to be happy.

                          DUNCAN
No, you're careless.  You didn't think it through.

                          JEFFREY
It sounds like if I thought it through and did it anyway, you'd have thought I was an even worse person.

                          DUNCAN
Maybe, but at least then I'd think you were a person who took the time to consider the consequences of his actions before taking them.

                          JEFFREY
I had several days when I was making the love potion to think about this.  And then a few days before that when I was considering whether to make it or not, and get the ingredients -

                          DUNCAN
And the whole time - ?

                          JEFFREY
I was wondering if I could work up the nerve to actually use it on Micah myself.

                          DUNCAN
But you didn't.

                          JEFFREY
I mean, if I did it without telling him, that'd be wrong, right?  But I'd still know.  Even if he said he loved me, I could never really believe it because I'd altered his consciousness to suit myself.

                          DUNCAN
So, instead of doing that, you just set him up to do the same thing to somebody else.

                          JEFFREY
Man.  I suck.

                          DUNCAN
Look, you've got most of the raw materials you need.
It'll be a while till the delivery truck gets around to me.
Go, get your stuff together.  Get the pre-mixing out of the way.  When the last piece of the puzzle arrives, I'll give you a call.

                          JEFFREY
Did I screw this up before it even started?

                          DUNCAN
The love potion, yes.

                          JEFFREY
And the you and me, potential us?

                          DUNCAN
Let's get the mess you came in with cleaned up first.
Then we'll deal with everything else.


(to be continued)




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