Theater
Excerpt: Commedia del Smartass

An eccentric comedy featuring an overachieving Girl Scout who wants to get into a good college, a Fencer who reads Machiavelli, a Clown of ambiguos gender, and a guy named Henry, Commedia is a stylized reminder that the treacherous environment of high school was only the opening salvo for the rest of one’s life. A New Georges production, it opens September 9th at the the Ohio Theater in SoHo .
(Back at the school cafeteria, Henry and Fencer.)
HENRY
Lurve. I think it’s lurve.
FENCER
Romeo and Juliet?
HENRY
No. My mom’s fine with it. She’s glad I’m happy.
FENCER
She’s been conscious?
HENRY
She’s always conscious intermittently. Damn.
FENCER
Sorry man. That was out of line.
HENRY
No shit. I mean, yes it was.
FENCER
Still watching your language?
HENRY
I want to get to the point where I don’t have to watch it. I want it to be clean without my thinking about it.
FENCER
Clean without thinking about it.
HENRY
What?
FENCER
No. It’s just an interesting concept.
HENRY
It’s lurve.
FENCER
Not love?
HENRY
I don’t want to presume.
FENCER
About what she feels?
HENRY
Yeah.
FENCER
What do you feel?
HENRY
I feel obsessed. I feel like a stalker. I rode my bike past her house last night. It was one a.m. I know where all her classes are. I know where she is at any time during the day, and I think about her, sitting in class, crossing her legs. I leave notes in her locker.
FENCER
You have her combination?
HENRY
I slip them through the, the air slot.
FENCER
Ah. Do you write poetry?
HENRY
No! (He does.)
FENCER
What do you write?
HENRY
None of your business. It’s really fun, being with her. It’s totally not tortured.
FENCER
Except that you called yourself a stalker.
HENRY
But she knows, and she’s not upset.
FENCER
But she hasn’t given you her combination.
HENRY
I like slipping them through the slot.
FENCER
You like slipping them through the slot.
HENRY
(good-natured) Shut up.
FENCER
So have you, you know.
HENRY
No. And that’s all I’m going to say.
FENCER
No, not yet .
HENRY
(warning) Shut up.
FENCER
So it’s nice. It’s not tortured.
HENRY
No.
FENCER
Like how? Besides the love notes.
HENRY
No way. You’d make fun.
FENCER
Do you share the same Coke?
HENRY
Maybe.
FENCER
Do you sit at the counter with like two bendy straws?
HENRY
See?
FENCER
You’re right, I’m bad. Backrubs? Watching sunsets?
HENRY
Maybe a sunset or two.
FENCER
Cheeseball. Totally cheeseball.
HENRY
Works for me.
FENCER
Maybe you’re missing out.
HENRY
On what?
FENCER
On the full range of feeling. Good and bad.
HENRY
Like I’m missing out if I don’t drive while I’m high?
FENCER
That was kids’ stuff.
HENRY
Yeah.
FENCER
Maybe to be an adult you have to be tortured.
HENRY
Then I don’t want to be an adult.
FENCER
I kind of think I do. Just, to be on my own.
HENRY
Driving alone through the streets?
FENCER
That’s your fantasy. I want girls hanging on every arm.
HENRY
Can’t you have that now?
FENCER
I want women hanging on every arm. A woman who’d hang on my arm now might be kinda messed up in the head. I want a sane woman.
HENRY
I don’t see that being exciting enough for you.
FENCER
She could be a sane spy .
HENRY
Spies are exciting.
FENCER
Shit, yeah. (He mimes shooting people). Pow pow. She would know like five languages.
HENRY
Maybe more.
FENCER
But mainly, she would practice the language of love.
HENRY
Of lurve.
FENCER
Of tortured lurve.
HENRY
Whatever. Freak.
FENCER
Hey. Watch it.
HENRY
You know, when you said you wanted women hanging on every arm. That sounds like you have more than two arms.
FENCER
I’m Doc Ock.
HENRY
You wish.
FENCER
I do. (pause) Think of what a great fencer I’d be. (pause) Think of what a great fencer I’d be. (pause) Think of what a great fencer I’d be.
(Fencer puts on his mask and starts making loud deep breaths like Darth Vader. Henry mimes taking out his light saber. This is a game they’ve played before.
Fencer takes out his own imaginary light saber. Both boys do the sound effects of the light sabers with gusto. They spar, then Darth kills Obi Wan. Henry collapses to the floor convincingly. Then he bounces up.)
HENRY
Now I get to kill you.
FENCER
I gotta get to class.
(Fencer exits. Henry, a little pissed, exits the other way.)
COMMEDIA DELL SMARTASS
by Sonya Sobieski, directed by Jean Randich
September 9- October 1, 7:30pm
at the Ohio Theater, 66 Wooster St. (between Spring/Broome),
additional performances: 9/10 and 10/1 at 4pm.
Tickets: $19.00, at 212-868-4444 or
www.smarttix.com
Mondays: pay-what-you-will (at the door only)
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