This work was performed as a one-person show as a part of the author’s ongoing On the Road: A Search for American Character series.
The objective of the On the Road series, in which this work is approximately the nineteenth play, is to absorb America “word for word” in the spirit of the nation’s “more perfect union” objective.
The play can be performed with any number of actors. It is the author’s intention that actors would portray characters outside of their own race, gender, age, and “type” within a diverse company of actors. Depending on available resources, this may or may not be possible or desired, in which case, artists are encouraged to cast and perform the play in any configuration of identity they deem meaningful or useful.
The author has often been asked in interviews if this work is mimicry or impressionism. It is not. Rather, when performed, it is a living document of speech in a moment and time in history. The actor is asked to take each real person at their word and with their word, to give full attention to their every utterance as recorded here.
Though it was not the case when the On the Road series began in the late 1970s, technology now affords artists working on the production the opportunity to see exactly who the people are and how they behave physically and linguistically. Actors are therefore encouraged, unless it is contrary to the director’s vision, to use all available documentary footage of those represented in these pages in order to study their language and to use this study as another doorway into understanding and representing their identity.
Punctuation is used to mark when speech starts and stops. Incomplete sentences and incomplete thoughts are intentional. Repeated words are intentional and should be spoken.
The interviewer’s presence is always implied. The interviewer is the audience. A lot of the show is direct address to the audience, but the audience should be thought of as a single individual unless the character is specifically talking to a crowd.
Slides with the character’s name, their occupation or position, and a title of the piece that follows are a part of the play and a part of the text. It is sometimes useful to audiences to include the same information on an insert in the program. As the slides are essential to the audience’s understanding of what they’re watching, it is also helpful if the pedagogy of the slides is introduced once the house is opened. In that way, the audience will be primed to look at the slides in relationship to the performer. The slides and the information on the slides are an important guide.
Marcus Shelby composed and performed live music onstage for performances of this play by Ms. Smith. Any genre of music and number of musicians can be employed, as this would be a directorial choice. The relationship between the performer and the musician was conceived by the author and created between the author/performer and the musician in the tradition of jazz and jazz improvisation. Hence, the onstage presence of a musician is intentional in this, the play’s original form.
A nonspeaking helper is used in lieu of a stagehand. In the Second Stage Theater and American Repertory Theater productions, a twentysomething white male was the helper. As the helper is visible, and as race is both significant and movable in this and other works of Ms. Smith, selection of the nonspeaking helper’s presence should be an aesthetic and perhaps sociological consideration.
The actor performs barefoot unless otherwise noted.