Don Nigro
Dramatic
LAURA, 26
LAURA has just started graduate school and seems to be doing well, but in fact she is a troubled girl, abandoned by her parents, raised by her stepfather, STEPHEN, upon whom she’s projected many contradictory but powerful feelings, including gratitude and love, but also anger at her parents and at him for not loving her enough, and also a deep undercurrent of suppressed erotic attachment, a feeling that STEPHEN shares but has been trying to fight. Here she has called him late at night and is ostensibly giving him ideas for the novel he’s been writing, but in fact she’s confronting him directly for the first time with the essence of their own situation. In the play, although it’s presumably a phone call, no telephone is present or mimed. She is in a circle of light speaking to us as if directly to him.
LAURA Suppose the daughter is in love with her stepfather. Suppose she’s been waiting to grow up so she can take her mother’s place. But it isn’t just her. There’s a kind of conspiracy between them. Between her and the stepfather. An unspoken conspiracy. They both know. They’ve known for years. But they never talk about it. But it’s always there between them. It’s perfect. See, that’s what drives the mother out of her mind. That’s why she goes away. She knows they want to get rid of her. That it’s not really about her at all. It’s about them. And so she gives them what they want. It’s an act of love, really. Well, a demented act of love by a self-destructive crazy person, but then, what isn’t? But wait. This is the good part. That’s what they’ve both been secretly hoping, right? The daughter and the stepfather, that the mother will go away. So she goes away and gives them what they want, because she can’t take it anymore and she’s losing her mind or whatever, and the thing is, when she actually does go away, it totally freaks them out. To get what they wanted is terrifying. And also, they’re both really hurt. That she would leave them. Because her being there is what’s allowed them to have this mutual fantasy that they never talk about, the fantasy that when the girl grows up she’s going to marry the stepfather. It was really exciting, as long as they didn’t talk about it. But now that the mother is gone and it’s just them all alone in that house the both of them are terrified out of their minds. Except the stepfather is even more terrified than the daughter. What do you think?