Vanya and Sonia and
Masha and Spike

by Christopher Durang

VANYA, a fifty-seven-year-old gay man who lives reclusively with his adopted sister in their family home, has written his first play, but the reading of it is interrupted by twenty-something SPIKE’s texting on his cell phone. This ignites a tirade against the modern world.

Scene

The exterior backyard of Vanya’s family’s country home.

Time

Afternoon, the present.

VANYA

You can multitask, how wonderful. You can tweet. You twitter and tweet, you email and text, your life is abuzz with electrical communication.

[Brief breath.]

I know older people always think the past was better, but really—instead of a text with all these lowercase letters, and no punctuation, what about a nicely crafted letter, sent through the post office? Or a thank-you note.

WE USED TO LICK POSTAGE STAMPS BACK THEN. Obviously you’ve never heard of that. They didn’t just peel off ready-made with sticky stuff on the back—the sticky stuff had to be triggered by your wet tongue. It took time. If you were sending out many letters, you could be licking postage stamps for ten minutes or so.

We used typewriters back then. And Wite-Out for corrections. And carbon paper for copies.

We had telephones and we had to dial the number by putting our index finger in a round hole representing two to zero. If the number was 909-9999, it could take hours just to dial the number. We had to have patience then. And we used to lick postage stamps. It was unpleasant, but it had to be done.

We didn’t multitask. Doing one thing at a time seemed appropriate. But I guess you can sort of listen to a play and sort of send a message and sort of play a video game . . . all at once. It must be wonderful . . .

I know I sound like a crank, but I don’t like change. My play is about scary change in the weather. But there are other changes too that have happened.

There are 785 television channels. You can watch the news report that matches what you already think. In the ’50s there were only three or four channels, and it was all in black and white.

And there was no child stars that became drug addicts like Lindsay Lohan. I mean, Hayley Mills was in the original Parent Trap, and she grew up to be a sensible, nice woman.

There was no South Park. We saw Howdy Doody starring a puppet. Then there was Kukla, Fran and Ollie—starring two more puppets and a sweet lady named Fran. We watched puppets back then!

There was the Perry Como Show. He was soothing. The Dinah Shore Show. She was charming.

The Bishop Sheen Show was on Sunday evening. A Catholic bishop had his own TV show. And he gave Sermons. On TV. We weren’t Catholic, but we watched him anyway. He said sensible things. On television.

The Ed Sullivan Show was on before Bishop Sheen, and he had opera singers on, and performers from current Broadway shows. Richard Burton and Julie Andrews would sing songs from Camelot. It was wonderful. It helped theater be part of the national consciousness, which it isn’t anymore.

And he had Señor Wences on, who had a Spanish accent and was a ventriloquist. And he painted a mouth on his fist, and he would make it speak.

[He speaks in funny voice—high one, very low one, high one—he uses his hand and thumb to imitate the way Señor Wences used his hand on a speaking puppet; speaking high.]

“Hello.”

[Low.]

“Hello.”

[High.]

“Hello.”

[Low.]

Hello. His act lasted about . . . seven hours. As a child I thought to myself, this must be what eternity feels like. And yet that’s a good concept for a child to have.

We licked postage stamps, and we sent letters.

I preferred Bishop Sheen to Señor Wences. Bishop Sheen was a good speaker, and he used his real mouth rather than one drawn onto his fist, and this made me take him more seriously.

I remember him talking about the seed falling on the good soil, falling on the bad soil, the seed falling on rock. In other words, build your life on a strong foundation.

Of course, I haven’t done that. But I meant to. Bishop Sheen said I should. I guess I got lost. But it was interesting to hear him talk that way. It was articulate. I don’t think much is articulate in the world anymore.

And I’m saying this all in retrospect. I didn’t think it when I was ten. I was just trying to get through life one day at a time when I was ten.

[To SPIKE.]

And I didn’t have a life ahead of me where I was going to be almost cast in Entourage 2. But I guess you’re having a good life, and I had a foolish one.

Tell me, do they have any older characters in Entourage 2? Do they need someone in their late fifties, who has had a useless life and is looking back feeling bitter? Might I audition for that part? Could you check?