My Musings

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Gun Farce

My Musings

Saturday, 19 January 2013

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This play I'm going to write is a farce in the traditional sense of the word: a comedic fugue, it is populated by pretenders, dunces, and asses; lots of doors are involved; there are several cases of mistaken identity.

The setting is a medical office building in a Brookline brownstone. Characters from every segment of society intermingle as they come in and out of the building to see doctors, dentists, shrinks, etc. and exchange pleasantries – or not – with the security guard in the lobby.

One thing we quickly discover: everyone is packing heat. Guns keep going off inadvertently, shooting out a lamp right next to a dozing homeless guy who's allowed in momentarily to warm up, blasting the hat off the bald, blowhard Doctor Mump, who keeps giving the wrong advice to teenage girls about acne. Needless to say, the mingling of these nutty, gun-wielding characters is hilarious.

The security guard is named Marcel. He’s French Canadian and a little down on his luck. Most recently, he worked security for the Canadian strategic maple syrup reserve, but for obvious reasons lost that position. Marcel takes the loss of that plum job in stride, believing that he can turn the experience into fodder for a play about the funny people you meet working security in a U.S. office building. Like everyone else, he’s packing a piece and is ready to draw at a moment’s notice, but his aim is bad, and he ends up hitting lots of light fixtures and the occasional ear or pinky finger. (Marcel is also tasked with replacing the light bulbs that keep getting shot out and calling for an ambulance when someone loses a toe to an errant bullet.)

At the climax of this farce, a teenager with a scarf around her face, which conceals the hideous results of an improperly prescribed acne drug, finally corners Doctor Mump and draws her gun, just as he draws his, Marcel draws his, and the people in the elevator that just opened up draw theirs. In quick succession, guns go off and everyone is hit, except Marcel, who walks away unscathed with a great script!