Diffusing Tension

POLICE INTERROGATION
COP 1: I don't buy the bullshit you're slinging! And I'm prepared to beat you with a tire iron until I get the truth!
COP 2: Nobody burns down an orphanage in my fucking city and gets away with it!
COP 1: I'm gonna cut your thumbs off and feed them to your newly decapitated head if you don't tell me where your accomplice is so I can string him up by the neck and leave him to rot and fester in the noonday sun!
SUSPECT: Can I just say that you are really pulling off that Paisley tie right now?
COP 1: Oh, thanks! Yeah my daughter got it for me.
COP 2: Hey, I have a daughter too.
SUSPECT: I've got two sons myself.
COP 2: Cool.

FAMILY ARGUMENT
FATHER: I told you, I can't show the receipts from the Vegas conference because I had to submit them to corporate!
MOTHER: Yeah well I can show you the paperwork on the withdrawal you made out of an ATM in some bar called "Skin"!
FATHER: Just because you're an overweight she-hag doesn't mean I'm out there snorting coke off stripper's asses!
MOTHER: Sorry we can't all disappear on deep sea fishing trips with our platonic work buddy "Scooter" when times get tough!
SON: You guys! Look what I won playing skeeball!
FATHER: Is that a plush Pikachu?!
MOTHER: I'll clear a space on the mantle!

BANK ROBBERY
THIEF: Put your hands over your goddamn head!
CIVILIAN: Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God...
THIEF: I will kill you! I will murder every man, woman and child in this bank if somebody doesn't fill this bag with cash right fucking now!
TELLER: Hey you guys...I know it came out a long time ago, but can we please talk about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for a second?
CIVILIAN: Don't get me started, I could gush all day!
THIEF: God, the sheer scope of that record is just breathtaking.

BREAKUP
MAN: I'm sorry, it's over.
WOMAN: How can you do this to me?
The man chokes on the hot dog he was eating and there is no more tension.

Director's Notes

The artistic process is a strange, unpredictable, terrifying beast that lives in the creatively minded and spends its days begging to leap from its masters' chest cavity and into the world of theater. The process of writing, directing and starring in "Smack Addict: A Nocturne In Three Movements?" resulted in the kind of catharsis that can only be attained when one lets that rabid mad dog that is Art off of its leash and lets it tear at the audience's throats. I would like to think that I did not conceive of this story, I simply let it emerge from the ether that is the muse of writing.

The challenges we face living in modern urban environments seem insurmountable. One might often feel adrift, a lost wayfarer in a sea of despair that isn't really a sea but is actually a major metropolitan city. The character of Rhoda is just such a wayfarer. Rhoda's journey from suburban stay at home mother of four to drug-riddled tarot card reader/prostitute forces us to ask the difficult questions. What is truth? How far may one fall before cracking their teeth on the gutter, metaphorically and literally? Is truth real? How poor is too poor? And finally, is this play happening? I assure you, it is.

My intentions in creating this work were to portray real people struggling in a real world. It ended up a story of real people struggling in a dystopian, magical-surrealist world. It is a story of humanity, not a thinly veiled platform for me to tout my political ideals. That being said, much of act two is about Israel.

A note on the dialect: I modeled the speech patterns of Rhoda and her lover Clarence Thomas after the sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the dialogue after the lyrics of Phil Collins. The characters' voices are not intended to sound like those of people, but rather people pretending to be people.

Thank you to the Newbury Community Rec Center for hosting this production, and to all of you for your support.

Learn, live, laugh, cry, think, question, and seek,

Chauncey Masterson