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It’s been a few years now since I’ve had a volume of collected plays appear on bookshelves—and I’m very happy to note that there are still shelves to appear on (at the time of my writing this preface, anyway). Not “virtual” shelves or as a part of an “app” you can download but actual wooden or metal shelves with actual paper books sitting on those shelves. What a lovely feeling and one that periodically threatens to disappear from our lives.
Some people just won’t miss books if they go—I’m sure of that for a fact. They’re not like Nazis, exactly (they probably don’t burn books in their spare time) but they’re close enough for my taste. They don’t like the bother of books: the weight, the size, the smell, the little stacks that gather in the corners of rooms. I love all of that. I live to crack open an old paperback on the street that someone is selling and to breathe in the musk of those pages or to find a forgotten receipt or an inscription or a leaf pressed within the pages. That’s wonderful. Occasionally I’ll get lucky and find a newspaper clipping from long ago or, better yet, a hand-written or typed note that was saved at some chapter heading and then forgotten—probably a simple book marker that now becomes a gateway to the past in my own hands.
I love books; to write them, to own them, to give and receive them. They are one of the great joys of living as far as I’m concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I like watching old re-runs of The Wild, Wild West and eating bad pizza as well, but books are one of the great treasures of my life. My mom introduced me to the pleasures of reading at an early age and I never came back. When I was a kid, going to the public library was almost as good as going to the A & W drive-in or to the movies. Maybe even better. The downtown library in Spokane, Washington, felt so vast and overpowering—I would probably laugh to see its paltry size now as an adult—but even my local branch was a literal world of wonder. We even had book-mobiles in my day. Amazing that those are creatures of the past already and I still feel like a young man (even though I no longer am).
I hope that you—whoever you are—if you’re holding this book in your hands and reading this introduction, feel a kindred spirit with books and literature and the pure sense of escape and magic that comes from launching into a world that you know nothing about. If you’re an actor and you bring these words to life in class or on a stage, I salute you in a special way because you are brave souls. Being an actor is such a gift and a curse—we love you for it and we judge you for it but most of us just can’t do it, no matter how easy you make it look. I, for one, appreciate the pain and euphoria you experience out there under the lights and I will always work to provide you with worthy and worthwhile material. Hopefully you will find some of that enclosed here in this compilation of short works.
Lovely Head, the one-act that lends its name to this volume, was written with an actor in mind but also came about because of a happy encounter I had with a fellow playwright named Marco Calvani. Marco is based in Italy but we met while doing workshops in Barcelona for Sala Beckett, a wonderful fringe theater in that fair city. Marco and I admired each other’s work and spoke one day about how rarely we are asked to direct another playwright’s work, mostly (I hope) because we are known for writing and directing our own material. Out of that conversation was born a project called AdA (Author directing Author) in which I wrote a play for him to direct and he did the same for me. Lovely Head was that play and his was called Things of This World, and we subsequently worked on them in Spoleto, Italy, thanks to the hard-working folks at La MaMa Umbria (headed by the indefatigable Mia Yoo) and a terrific group of actors from MIXO (Marco’s company in Rome), along with the incredible Urbano Barberini and the exquisite Andrea Ferreol. After finishing at the Spoleto Festival, we subsequently staged both pieces at the Fringe Festival in Madrid and in New York City at the Ellen Stewart Theater (back at La MaMa’s home base). In NYC I got to work with the collective brilliant acting minds of Craig Bierko, Gia Crovatin, Larry Pine and Estelle Parsons and I felt that old rush of putting up a show quickly and dangerously, but with the kind of actors that really make you stop and pinch yourself in rehearsal because they’re so damn good. AdA was a really special experience and the kind of thing I believe you need to do as a long-time competitor in these theatrical sweepstakes known as a “career”: no matter how it all turns out, you need to keep trying new things.
I should also say that the title of this play was too clever for me to have come up with it on my own—my thanks goes to the members of the musical group called Goldfrapp, whose song I ripped it off from. It was meant as a tribute to their great and ethereal work (go listen to Felt Mountain if you haven’t heard it already).
All of these other plays have either made their debut or at least played at some venue in New York City (with the exception of Over the River and Through the Woods, which will make its New York debut later this year). A few started on the West Coast, one as a short film and two of them, as you will see, are monologues (one of them first performed by the actress Alice Eve and the other one first performed by this author—I’ll leave it to you to sort out which one is which).
All of them were fun to write, to work on and/or to watch in performance. I’ve been so lucky to constantly have great actors to elevate my material up on stage. I hope this trend continues forever—believe me, you know the difference when you see it.
A quick word about the play Strange Fruit, which was written for a show called Standing On Ceremony and was a collection of short plays defending gay marriage. I was asked by a gifted producer named Joan Stein (who passed away just last year) if I would be interested in writing something and my automatic answer was “yes.” I’m always interested in the theater, whatever the venue, whatever the time and whatever the reason. I love it. That said, I did it as much for her as anything; we had worked together years ago on the play bash in Los Angeles and since then I had know her as a lover of life and a crusader for theater and basic human rights. Joan was the real deal, a person who looked you straight in the eye and told you the truth. She will be missed.
Thank you—whomever you are—for reading this, for putting up with me and for continuing to read or perform or despise or love or dismiss or praise my work. Thank you for coming back and trying it once again—I feel the same way you do about me: “sometimes he’s good, sometimes he’s bad, but at least the guy keeps swinging for the fences.” I hope that all of you in this profession, from onlooker to critic to artist, keep doing that very same thing.
Neil LaBute
January 2013