by Jerry Rabushka
A finalist in a playwriting contest sponsored by LDI Productions, Los Angeles, CA; & the 2007 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, New Orleans, LA.
Cast:
Kabul: Andy Milligan
Rob: Mike White
Xenia: Tiffany Wilcox
Quince: Zach Jett
Nan: Karen Wood
Director: Jerry Rabushka
Producer, Tech Director Set Design & Construction: Skip Hardesty
Additional Set Construction: Rob Shipman, Zach Jett
Kabul is 23, Rob is 53. But they're in love! Can they make it work? Maybe so, if everyone around will let them. Rob's mother, a saucy no-holds-barred lady of 78, gets more sex than anyone in the cast, and is tired of seeing Rob get his heart broken by younger men. Kabul's best friend Xenia has a Goth wardrobe and matching mentality - who wants to die when you can stay here and enjoy the misery? Kabul's new friend John Quince tries to push past the bounds of friendship; with him, even a trip to Old Navy is fraught with romantic possibilities.
Kabul, alone and a virgin until meeting Rob at 23, finds that the world of love and romance is as scary as going it by himself. He has a bizarre ability to see through people's minds, and operating on two realities at the same time. He watched the twin towers fall from a hotel room in New York - that only made it worse. In this world, sharing a cup of coffee can mean more than making love. It all depends what side you drink out of. New scenes pop up in the middle of old scenes, then suddenly retreat, to capture the wanderings of his mind.
Kabul for the first time in his life, gets a gang of friends together; friends, a lover, somebody's mom. For a short while this lonely man has it all, until it starts, almost imperceptibly, to unravel....
Thoughts from the cast
Xenia: Tiffany Wilcox
To the outside world Xenia is your stereo-typical Goth lesbian bitch wearing nothing but black with a mocha latte accompanying. She cuts people down with her snide sarcastic remarks; her bitter glares have the ability to turn some to stone. But somehow through all this, her personality is irresistible.
Perhaps it is her blunt honesty or her positively negative outlook on life. Or maybe it's that she too is falling apart inside just like everything around her. She masks herself in black so she won't have to feel or experience life... but she does feel... her heart does work. She wants to control every single detail in her life and in the process inadvertently stereotypes herself into this bitch - now she is stuck with it. She is comfortable in this facade but Kabul, her closest friend, is breaking free and by so doing he is causing her deceitful web to spiral out of control.
Nan: Karen Wood
How does a 27-year-old happily married woman play a 78-year-old slut?
You start with Thelma Harper from the 80s sitcom "Mama's Family," throw in some brutal honesty mixed with a heaping mound of openly crass sexuality, and wait to see what will come out of her mouth next. Nan is a no-holds-barred, tell it like it is kind of woman who you'll just have to see to believe!
Rob: Mike White
Rob attempts to follow his heart in what seems to be his ideal match with Kabul. Given his mother Nan's tough love observations, combined with Kabul's powerful yet random moments of perception, he is forced to examine his short-term relationship patterns as he watches Kabul reveal his own complex inner turmoils.
Quince: Zach Jett
Quince has spent half a decade or so club-thumping and engaging in all kinds of indiscriminate, non-committed sex, which has invariably led to a jaded and unfulfilled personal credo that obliterates any practical entwinement of love and sex. He has survived "the gay life" more or less unfettered until he encounters Kabul and his friend Xenia. Perhaps it is Kabul's untouched youthfulness and naive optimism that first stirs Quince. Perhaps Quince is horny. Or both.
In any case. "it's ON" from scene one. Quince, over time, only gains a precarious foothold during "the eye of the storm," and is left with no soft niche to crawl into when the winds rise and he's blown about by the howling force of Kabul's frayed psyche. To Quince, this might have been love, this one time.
Kabul: Andy Milligan
Just about everything Kabul says is messed up. His lines are all over the place because his mind goes in every direction. So I try to think like he thinks to get myself there along with him.
