The Art of Dining Play Tina Howe Pdf Free
Adjacent in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The Art of Dining: A Comedy
A sweeping multi-character play that takes place on the nighttime a certain chi-chi eating place opens. Again, we take many characters at different tables, and we dip in and out of their stories. The play is all about nutrient – people's issues with food, the commemoration of a meal, the fundamental deed of eating, consumption in general …
I'm going to excerpt from the scene between David Osslow (head of his ain publishing company – confident, no issues with food whatsoever) and Elizabeth Barrow Filly (a pathologically shy writer – played by Dianne Wiest in the original production.) Colt is shy, nervous, barely able to speak … She is also nearsighted and very VERY afraid of food. Osslow and Colt are having a business dinner to hash out her work. This is their commencement coming together. I would have LOVED to see Dianne Wiest exercise this part. It's funny because the grapheme literally can barely speak she'south then shy … she grunts, murmurs, sighs … then of a sudden – she has a one-page monologue that is kind of so horrifying that yous wish she would shut upward again. It'due south a very funny device.
Excerpt FROM The Art of Dining: A Comedy
Lights rising on Elizabeth Barrow Filly and David Osslow. Elizabeth is staring at her soup, motionless. David Osslow, the successful head of his own publishing company, a man with a glowing ambition and glowing literary sense of taste, is happily eating his. He'due south in his fifties, is dapper, at ease, and ready for anything.
DAVID OSSLOW. I like your piece of work very much.
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. (drops her caput and murmurs)
DAVID OSSLOW. We all likeit.
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. (shuts her eyes, murmurs once again)
DAVID OSSLOW. I beg your pardon?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (Flinches)
DAVID OSSLOW. Are you all right?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (nodding, eyes closed) Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine …
(A silence)
DAVID OSSLOW. For some reason I imagined you very differently. (A silence) I thought you'd take a very large caput.
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (starts laughing, wishing she could stop.)
DAVID OSSLOW. No, really I did. I idea y'all'd have this … (indicating the size with his hands) huge head!
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (finds this hysterical, and trying not to express mirth, makes peculiar squeaking sounds)
DAVID OSSLOW. Y'all know how you form an paradigm of someone y'all haven't met?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (Keeps laughing)
DAVID OSSLOW. I also pictured y'all every bit having very bushy eyebrows. You know, the kind that almost run across over the bridge of the nose …
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (Helpless with laughter and embarrassment, tries to hide her face in her napkin and accidentally knocks over her bowl of soup, spilling the unabridged contents into her lap. She leaps to her anxiety, flapping like a wet puppy) Oh dear!
DAVID OSSLOW. (bolts out of his seat to assistance her) Are yous all correct?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (frantically wiping at her dress with her napkin) I spilled …
DAVID OSSLOW. (lifting his napkin to assistance) Did you burn yourself?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (shrinking from him) I spilled all my soup.
DAVID OSSLOW. (starts wiping at her dress with his napkin) Here, permit me assistance …
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (turning her back to him) No, no, I tin …
DAVID OSSLOW. Are yous sure you're …
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. I'm sorry.
DAVID OSSLOW. Let me get the waiter. Waiter!
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. (her back turned, hunches over her spilled dress as if the most secret role of her torso had of a sudden sprung a leak) I tin can …
CAL. (striding over) Yes?
[The following 2 brusque speeches announced side to side in my script. They are to exist said simultaneously – a very Tina Howe touch.]
DAVID OSSLOW. I'm agape we've had a slight spill. Could you bring us some water and extra napkins?
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. It'southward fine … It'southward coming right out … It's nothing … actually nothing … (showing her dress) See, I got information technology all out.
CAL. Yes, right away, I'll become you lot some fresh napkins and we'll make clean it up in no time. (He produces several napkins from his pockete and joins David Osslow in wiping Elizabeth off)
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (dying of embarrassment since the spill hit her squarely in her crotch) No really I can … allow me …
CAL. It shouldn't stain. A skillful dry cleaner should exist able to go this right out. (feeling the material) What is this fabric anyway? Cotton wool?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Information technology isn't my dress … (she keeps fussing over it)
CAL. (to David Osslow, feeling the fabric) Wouldn't you say this was cotton wool?
DAVID OSSLOW. (feels it) No, that isn't cotton, it feels more similar … rayon to me …
CAL. (feeling some other department of it) Rayon? It'due south besides lightweight to be rayon…
DAVID OSSLOW. It could exist a wool challis …
CAL. I say it's either cotton or a cotton fiber alloy.
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. I don't take a proper dress …
DAVID OSSLOW. As long every bit information technology'southward non a synthetic, she should have no issues …
CAL. (feeling it again) You know, it might just be … slik!
DAVID OSSLOW. (feels) Silk?
CAL. That'due south correct: silk!
DAVID OSSLOW. (even so feeling) It certainly has the weight of silk …
CAL. It'due south silk! That's what it is!
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. She'll kill me.
CAL. Don't worry, this will come right out. Silk sheds stains like water. (Pushes into the kitchen with the soiled napkins)
DAVID OSSLOW. It's a nice wearing apparel.
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (trying to hide the immense stain with her napkin, heads back towards her chair I'm sorry …
DAVID OSSLOW. (pulls out her chair for her) These kinds of things happen all the …
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. (collapses in the chair before he's pulled it out all the manner, making a loud plop.) Oh love, I …
DAVID OSSLOW. (strains to push the chair, with her in it, closer to the tabular array) There nosotros go … (He returns to his seat, looks at her, reaches across the tabular array and picks up her hand, squeezes it so lets go) Are yous all right?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (head down) Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine …
(A silence)
CAL. (returns with a make new basin of steaming soup which he sets down before Elizabeth) There we go! (And he turns on his heel)
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. (her shoulders giving way, looks at it.) Oh honey.
(A slight pause)
DAVID OSSLOW. Elizabeth, I'd similar to publish your short stories.
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. (looking into the soup, stunned) Oh my.
DAVID OSSLOW. They're wonderful.
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. Mercy!
DAVID OSSLOW. What did you say?
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. (softly) I don't know what to say …
DAVID OSSLOW … truly wonderful!
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. I never imagined … (starts fishing effectually in her handbag)
DAVID OSSLOW. You're incredibly gifted …
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Oh no, I'm … (pulls out her lipstick, lowers her caput and sneaks on a smear, easily shaking. Suddenly she drops the lipstick. Information technology falls into her soup with a splash) Oh no!
DAVID OSSLOW. What was that?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (dives for it) Oh naught, I just dropped my lipstick … (She repeatedly tries to retrieve it with her spoon, only it keeps splashing back down into her soup. She finally gives upwards, fishes it out with her hands, and drops it into her purse)
DAVID OSSLOW. Don't you similar the soup?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (hunched over her bag) Oh aye, it's …
DAVID OSSLOW. It looks delicious.
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (staring at it) Yes, information technology's very nice.
[The post-obit two lines should be said simultaneously]
DAVID OSSLOW. I've always loved French Provincial … I'k sorry … I …
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. Would y'all like it?
(A pause)
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. OH, Yous HAVE It.
DAVID OSSLOW. No, really, I …
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (picks up the bowl with trembling hands and starts lifting information technology across the table to him, her spoon still in it) I want you to have it.
DAVID OSSLOW. Careful!
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. (giddy, the soupl sloshing wildly) I never accept soup!
DAVID OSSLOW. Look out!
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. In fact, I hardly ever have dinner either!
DAVID OSSLOW. Really, I …
ELIZABETH BARROW Filly. (sets it down in front of him, spilling some) THERE.
DAVID OSSLOW. (looks at it. Weakly.) Well, thanks.
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. (incredibly relieved, looks at him and sighs)
DAVID OSSLOW. (picks upwardly her spoon and dips it into the soup)
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. This is dainty.
DAVID OSSLOW. (starts eating information technology)
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. How is it?
DAVID OSSLOW. Very good. Would you like a taste?
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. Oh, no, cheers!
(A silence)
DAVID OSSLOW. Do you melt at all?
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Oh no.
DAVID OSSLOW. (reaches a spoonful of soup across the table to her) Come on, endeavor some.
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (she tastes it) My mother didn't cook either.
DAVID OSSLOW. Now isn't that good? (gives her some other taste)
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Mmmmmm … (apace wipes her mouth with her napkin)
DAVID OSSLOW. (takes a gustatory modality himself) My mother was a great cook.
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. She didn't know how. She grew upward with servants.
DAVID OSSLOW. Her Thanksgiving dinners! …
ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. We had a melt. Lacey. She was atrocious and she smelled.
DAVID OSSLOW. I cook every once in a while.
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. We all hated her. Especially my mother.
DAVID OSSLOW. My married woman is a great cook! Some nighttime you lot'll accept to come over for dinner!
(He settles into his soup, eating with less and less savor as her story progresses)
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. In fact, when I was young I never even saw my mother in the kitchen. The food just appeared at mealtimes every bit if by magic, all steaming and set up to eat. Lacey would conduct information technology in on these large white serving platters that had a rim of raised red china acorns. Our plates had the same rim. Twenty-2 acorns per plate, each one nearly the size of a lump of chewed mucilage. When I was very young I used to endeavor and pry them off with my knife … We ate every dark at eight o'clock abrupt because my parents didn't start their cocktail hour until seven, but since dinner fourth dimension was meant for exchanging news of the day, the emphasis was always on talking … and not on eating. My father bolted his food, and my mother played with hers: sculpting it upwardly into hills and so mashing it dorsum downward through her fork. To make things worse, before we saturday down at the table she'd always put on a fresh smear of lipstick. I still call up the shade. It was called "Fire and Ice …" a nighttime throbbing red that rubbed off on her fork in waxy clumps that stained her food pink, and then that by the end of the first course she'd have rended everything into a kind of … rosy puree. Equally my father wolfed down his meat and vegetables, I'd sentry my mother thread the puree through the raised acorns on her plate, fanning information technology out into long runny pinkish ribbons … I could never consume a thing … "WAKE Upward, AMERICA!" she'd trumpet to me. "You lot're not being excused from this table until you clean upwards that plate!" So, I'd take several mouthfuls and so when no one was looking, would spit them out into my napkin. Each night I systematically transferred everything on my plate into that lifesaving napkin …
DAVID OSSLOW. Jesus Christ.
ELIZABETH BARROW Colt. It'southward amazing they never caught on.
DAVID OSSLOW. (lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag)
Source: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=3361
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