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Gertrude Stein in Dayton and Other Plays
Gertrude Stein in Dayton and Other Plays
Gertrude Stein in Dayton and Other Plays
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Gertrude Stein in Dayton and Other Plays

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Gertrude Stein in Dayton & Other Plays is the 2nd collection of plays by Louis Phillips, published by World Audience. This collection is an excellent, eclectic mix of plays by accomplished and award-winning playwright, who has been produced in New York City and regional theater. The plays are poignant and humorous, powerful and articulate. A must buy!

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 29, 2017
ISBN9781934209684
Gertrude Stein in Dayton and Other Plays

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    Gertrude Stein in Dayton and Other Plays - Louis Phillips

    Gertrude Stein in Dayton & Other Plays

    by

    Louis Phillips

    A World Audience Book

    (www.worldaudience.org)

    February, 2008

    New York (NY, USA)

    Newcastle (NSW, Australia)

    For all those wonderful theater people directors, actors, designers, & tech persons who have ever been involved in staging one of my plays, full-length or one-acts.....

    "....................................these our actors,

    As I foretold you, were all spirits and

    Are melted into air, into thin air..."

    The Tempest, Act IV, scene 4

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    ––––––––

    Gertrude Stein in Dayton.................................................7

    The Chinese Ring Game in the Garden of Tivoli....................19

    The Caravan..............................................................38

    Crazy Juke.................................................................55

    History of the Expedition Under the Command of

    Captains Lewis and Clark to the Sources of the Missouri. Most Likely Not................................................................69

    Sizzle......................................................................91

    Trapped in the City of Time...........................................113

    The Night Clerk........................................................127

    Minotaur Golf..........................................................149

    Gertrude Stein in Dayton

    ––––––––

    Lights down. We hear a train whistle. Steam. Stepping off the train is a young GERTRUDE STEIN (in her early 30s) with a carpetbag and umbrella. She is a formidable presence. She looks around. ALVIN KUMLER rushes forward to greet her.

    ALVIN W. KUMLER: Miss Stein. You have arrived.

    GETRUDE STEIN: It is February.

    ALVIN W. KUMLER: Yes. It is.

    GERTRUDE KUMLER: It is easy to arrive in February. They that possess February flourish.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Alvin Kumler. Mr. Thomas and I compiled the volume we would like you to breathe life into. May I carry your bag?

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Not many things in it. A seal and a swan and a swimsuit. Bottles of ink, some items from Victoria's Secret, and sugar. Sugar is not a vegetable, you know.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I never imagined it was.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: But if people could imagine that sugar is a vegetable what a better universe it would be.

    ALVIN KUMLER: In Dayton, we're more practical. Engineering keeps us on the map.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: I've heard so much about your painful culture. And these are my ostrich quills which I use for writing.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I didn’t realize Ostriches had quills.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Try to imagine it. Ostriches save quills for special occasions. Somehow Ostriches save everything for special occasions.  That’s the nature of ostriches. And politicians too.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I trust we are a special occasion. My car is waiting to whisk you to the finest hotel in town. We have spared no expense.

    GETRUDE STEIN: I am ready to get right to work.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I can’t tell you how overjoyed everyone on the City Council is that you have agreed to undertake a rewriting of our city’s ordinances. Those books of city laws are always looked down upon by critics. We write them and the books never get reviewed.  It throws us into complete despair.

    GETRUDE STEIN: The world has more despair than it has trees. That has been mathematically proven.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Publishers laugh at us. Stage Producers ignore us.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: No motion picture sales, I imagine.

    ALVIN KUMLER: No moving picture sales. Though we once had a nibble from Clara Bow, the IT girl.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: I always wish I had been named after a pronoun.

    ALVIN KUMLER: We or Them?

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Me. I have arrived in Dayton in February to invent the airplane.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Thanks to our local heroes, The Wright Brothers, the airplane has already been invented.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Everything that has been invented must be invented again. Otherwise History will arrive at a dead end. The younger generation will behave like lemmings and throw themselves into the sea... The Laws and Ordinances of Dayton must be completely redone.

    Sound of a biplane flying overhead.

    ALVIN KUMLER: See? There is a plane flying over our heads now.

    GERTRUDE KUMLER: Is that the French idea of a sentence?

    ALVIN KUMLER: Of course not. It’s an airplane.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Are you sure it is not thousands of butterflies massed around a propeller and a motor?

    ALVIN KUMLER: You may be right.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Hindsight is the most-well-developed human sense. Nothing compares with hindsight.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Your eyesight is better than mine.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: A single image is not splendor.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I could not agree with you more.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: No. You could not agree with me more. But airplanes should fly under the earth and keep the air free. The propellers could then churn up the soil and make it fit for planting crops. Thus, the plane would be doing more than one activity at once. Also, if planes flew under the earth, people wouldn’t worry about crashing. Knowing they could get out and walk, their anxieties would drop away. Each flight would be a freeing of the spirit. There would be dancing and singing everywhere. Joy would fill the land, and people would give up drinking.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Miss Stein, allow me to show you to the hotel and get you settled. I have brought you a complete volume of The Laws and Ordinances of the City of Dayton just in case you forgot to bring your copy.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Thank you. One can never have too many copies of Laws and Ordinances of the City of Dayton.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I have 2,000 copies in my attic. I give them out to young people when they come trick or treating on Halloween.

    GERTRUDE STEIN stops in front of a telephone pole that bears a movie poster advertising a showing of the It girl starring Clara Bow.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Oh look at the Clara Bow poster. And weren’t you just talking about It?

    ALVIN KUMLER: Me?

    GERTRUDE STEIN: You.

    ALVIN KUMLER: We?

    GERTRUDE STEIN: It. After all what is the difference between it and you. Everybody has said they are happy.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I don’t follow you.

    GERTRTUDE STEIN: Just a few moments ago, you were following me. A bit too closely, I might add.

    She tears the poster from the pole and rolls it up and places it in her valise.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I wish you had not done that.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: That?

    ALVIN KUMLER (indicates the poster): This.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Why not? Did you want the poster for yourself?

    ALVIN KUMLER: No. What you did was against the law.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Law? What law?

    ALVIN KUMLER (opens the volume and reads): An Ordinance to punish the removal or mutilation of show bills or advertisements posted in the city of Dayton. Passed January 13, 1863. Be it ordained by the City Council of the city of Dayton....Very pleasing that repetition of the word city. Repetition is a form of possession and possession is 9/l0ths of the law. Repetition of possession is the rest.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Every day of our lives is a masterful portrait of key repetitions. Repetition certainly has everything to do with prose. At least my prose.

    ALVIN KUMLER: THAT it shall be unlawful for any person to willfully remove, deface, or mutilate any show bill, or other advertisement posted in said city. I, therefore, am going to have to put you under house arrest.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: I am not in Dayton seven minutes and I have already broken a law. Oh Miss Alice will be so pleased. You and your fellow members of the City Council seemed to have thought of everything.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Not quite. You are not here to test the laws, Miss Stein. You are here to rewrite them. With your ostrich quills. But since it is a first offence, (takes out his check book) I’ll gladly pay the fine.

    GETRUDE STEIN: May I have that book?

    Kumler hands her the volume.

    GETRUDE STEIN: If people decided not to go to the movies and theaters to see desperate persons committing desperate acts, the good citizens of Dayton and beyond would lead lives of absolute despair.

    ALVIN KUMLER: That’s why they need laws to guide them.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: And precise language in which to word the laws.

    She takes her pen and crosses out the law.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Miss Stein, you are defacing my book.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: No. I was brought here to rewrite the laws. I am starting with this one. We can get along without it, don’t you think?

    ALVIN KUMLER (gently removing her pen): Just take my arm, Miss Stein. I shall be your guide. You strike me as the kind of person definitely in need of a guide.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: When you wrote to me, I said to Miss Alice, Suppose a man of realistic expression of resolute reliability suggests pleasing itself while all white and no head does that mean soap. It does no so.

    ALVIN KUMLER: You said all that about me,

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Not in so many words, of course.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Of course not. Far fewer words, I imagine.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Fewer words are difficult to imagine.

    Traffic sounds as they start toward ALVIN KUMLER’s car. Lights out. Light up on ALVIN KUMLER.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Talking about fewer words, the plot makes progress. One evening while Gertrude Stein is in her hotel room writing a long letter to her lifelong companion Alice B. Toklas, thugs break into her room. There is a great scuffle. Listen to it on our radio.

    We hear (à la radio sound effects) a scuffle, complete with bells and whistles.

    THE VOICE OF GERTRUDE STEIN: Do not brute me with your unhands. Put down that vase. It has that shape nicely. Very nicely may not be exaggerating. Very strange may be sincerely fainting may be strangely flattering. May not be strange in everything. May not be strange to.

    THUG VOICE: Shut the lady up before she drives me out of my mind.

    Sound of a vase being shattered over GERTRUDE STEIN’s head.

    THUG VOICE: Good work. Maybe a broken vase on her noggin will un-dangle her participles.

    ALVIN KUMLER switches off the radio. Lights down. Lights up on ALVIN KUMLER as he holds a sheet of hotel stationary and is talking on a 1930s phone.

    ALVIN KUMLER: Yes, chief inspector. Miss Stein has not been in our city for 24 hours and now she is in the hands of kidnapers. How do I know? Because I have her ransom note right in front of me. Dear Mr. Kumler and Members if the City Council of Dayton:

    In some spaces there are no trees, in every space there is a hint of more, but I am now in a tight space where the brigands who have taken me from the hotel hint of more. These men of resolute unreliability demand $25,000 in unmarked bills, which we all know is impossible because all bills are outwardly marked and hint of space, 3 kilos of marijuana in plain brown wrappers, and a plane to fly to Mexico. Preferably the plane used by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. If you can deliver same within 24 hours I shall be released unharmed which we all know is impossible because I have already been psychologically harmed. I hope you will remind my captives THAT it shall be unlawful for any person to willfully remove, deface, or mutilate any visitor posted in said city. Now all this is still sentences. Paragraphs are still why you were selfish..." (Pause.) You still there, Inspector? Yes, I do believe it is a ransom note. It’s in Miss Stein’s handwriting and she has signed it boldly. There are witnesses at the Hotel who saw our celebrated guest being dragged into a roadster and being driven away at breakneck speed. (He listens.) Of course, we can’t give them the Wright Brothers’ plane. That is at the Smithsonian. Obviously these kidnapers are not from Dayton and they know nothing of the history of aviation. The criminal mind is not what it used to be. It used to be Fu Manchu. Master Criminals who knew everything. Now we’re merely up against some rather ordinary thugs. (He listens.) What I propose is that we give into their demands. If we don’t what celebrity will ever come to Dayton again? We’ll end up entertaining hosts of cooking shows .Listen Inspector. This is my idea. We’ll give them the mock-up of the Wright Brothers’ plane.  It can’t fly more than a few thousand yards at most. When it cracks up, you and your men will move in for the kill. Law and Order will be restored to our fair city. Our pride will be restored. And we’ll have Gertrude Stein back in our laps, as it were. Thank you, Sir. Feminists everywhere shall thank you. Plus numerous PhD candidates.

    He hangs up, turns toward the window. He has no sooner finished his conversation with the police commissioner when we hear six-shooters being fired. We see Gertrude Stein in full cowboy regalia, including boots, bandana, chaps, spurs, and Stetson. She is blasting her way across stage, her six shooters blazing. She resembles Tom Mix.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: Take that you varmints! And that! Or you can take this instead of that if you prefer this to that. You asked for it, but that pronoun I shall not give you!  Why is they asked for it a sentence?  Eat lead, you yellow-bellied changelings.

    One of the varmints, clutching his chest, staggers out and falls to the ground.

    VARMINT: You got me in my subordinate clause with your correlative.

    He dies cowboy music under. She stops, blows on her six shooters and places them in her holsters.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: That will teach them to try to kidnap a first-rate author of Tender Buttons. (Turns to ALVIN KUMLER.) First-rate has no relation at all to second-rate. Nor to uncles.

    ALVIN KUMLER: I wish you hadn’t done that. I had a plan all worked out to save you.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: My mother taught me to save myself.

    ALVIN KUMLER: But it is unlawful for any person to discharge firearms within the city limits without written permission from the Chief of Police.

    GERTRUDE STEIN: You mean I’ve broken another law already?

    ALVIN KUMLER:

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