A play noir about murder, aging, love, inspiration...and the press.
A play noir about murder, aging, love, inspiration...and the press. |
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Davis, a decent but mediocre journalist in his forties has recently relocated to L.A. with his wife. But his big break hasn't arrived and the move is taking its toll on his marriage. When Davis meets Megan, a young woman, in a bar, he's inclined to keep things platonic, despite the stirrings of attraction. But the next day, he's asked to write a story on her murder, a story that becomes a guilty obsession and threatens to destroy everything he has.
Actors: monologue excerpts from this play are posted on this site.
note: Nate and Joe can be played by the same actor.
LA, recent past. The primary locations are a bar in Hollywood and the home of Beth and Davis. Minimal unit set is ideal, allowing for flow from scene to scene. Running time is 2 hours including a 15 minute intermission.
Love And A Wide Moon has the following development and award history:
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Mary Rychlewski directs Jon Wright, Anita Summerville & Jennifer Stire in rehearsal for a reading at Heartlande Theatre Co. |
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In 2007 Love and A Wide Moon had a student production at the Prince William Sound Community College in Valdez, AK. This production was directed by Dawson Moore and featured Chelsea Fairbank, Adama Warwas, Scott Frank, Chris Miller, Jay Stevens, Jessica Vincent and Ana Hinkle.
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More sample scenes available on request, and see monologue posted on this site.
Act One Scene OneA bar. DAVIS is drinking alone when MEGAN enters wearing a long red cotton skirt, sandals and a knitted black top. She looks around briefly looking at Davis then away. A beat. She appears to make up her mind about something and goes over to him.
MEGAN: Isn't it a beautiful night?
DAVIS: I'm not qualified to judge; I've spent most of it in here.
MEGAN: You should get out more; you don't know what you're missing.
DAVIS: Right.
MEGAN: Well, anyway. Thanks for waiting
DAVIS: You think I've been waiting?
MEGAN: Of course.
DAVIS: I'll take your word for it.
MEGAN: When you think about it, we all are. Waiting for that moment, you know? Being in the right place at the right time for something to happen.
DAVIS :The search for the right place is what brought me to L.A. to begin with.
MEGAN: Yeah, me too!
DAVIS: Well I don't know about you but it hasn't done me too many favors so far.
MEGAN smiles at him. DAVIS pulls the stool beside him out and gestures for her to sit. She kisses him tenderly on the cheek then sits.
DAVIS: I hope you haven't mistaken me for someone else, but I don't know you.
MEGAN: Actually, I have a confession.
DAVIS: You don't know me either.
MEGAN: Right. I've always wanted to do that.
DAVIS: Kiss a stranger?
MEGAN: Okay, it was a crazy idea.
DAVIS: Maybe just a little.
MEGAN: Yeah.
DAVIS: Yeah.
MEGAN: Do you want to buy me a drink?
DAVIS: Ah, the agenda emerges. (a beat) Sure, why not?
DAVIS motions to a NATE, a bar tender, who enters .
MEGAN: A whiskey sour please.
NATE: Coming up. Another for you sir?
DAVIS: I'll have what she's having.
NATE: You got it.
MEGAN: (a beat) Have you ever wanted to just... step into another life? You know, just walk on through that looking glass and be someone else, somewhere else?
DAVIS:(cautiously) Are we still on crazy ideas?
MEGAN: You read about it all the time. Bored housewives who just vanish. Where do they go? My theory is they just make up their minds and bail. They wake up one morning and think, this is it. Today I am not Janet Jones anymore; I'm Ingrid Havvanah.
DAVIS: Ingrid Havvanah?
MEGAN: Why not? There's a whole race of Ingrids out there. They pick up their purses, walk out their front doors and board buses or trains and just go. Until they end up somewhere. And then they walk through a door, to a bar, say, or a store or a ticket office and pouf! New life. Everyone around them is a new connection. It's like stepping through the looking glass. The thing is to trick yourself into believing that the unfamiliar is the familiar and the other way round.
DAVIS: So that's why you kissed me? You're trying to trick yourself into thinking the unfamiliar is... an old friend?
MEGAN: Yes. And no. (a beat) I liked the look of you.
DAVIS: So at the risk of sounding self-centered, did your experiment work?
MEGAN: It's not a matter of working. I just wanted to see what it felt like. (shrugs) Anyone watching us would have thought I knew you.
DAVIS puts a hand to his cheek where she kissed him.
DAVIS: Yes, they probably would.
NATE enters, sets their drinks down and leaves. DAVIS holds his hand out and shakes MEGAN's hand.
DAVIS: I'm Davis. What's your name?
MEGAN: Janet. Janet Jones.
DAVIS: But I can call you Ingrid
MEGAN: (laughs) It's better if we don't exchange names. Don't you think?
DAVIS: Wouldn't that get in the way of getting to know an old friend?
MEGA:(whispers) Keep the mystery.
DAVIS: I see.
MEGAN sips her drink. A beat.
MEGAN: It's a full moon tonight.
DAVIS: Yeah, making women crazy all over the country.
MEGAN: Turning us into...werewolves!
MEGAN lunges at him, pretending to be a werewolf. In the process she accidentally scratches him.
DAVIS: (holds his hands up, a gesture of surrender) Okay Janet, you got me.
MEGAN: Sorry. Did I hurt you? I didn't mean to.
DAVIS: Just a little scratch. Don't worry about it. But you sure have long fingernails for a hippie.
MEGAN: I'm not a hippie.
DAVIS: You're not a werewolf either. I'll go with my first impression and say you're a nice young woman, how's that.
MEGAN: (guilty) Yeah, most nice young women don't injure people.
DAVIS: Don't worry about it; it doesn't hurt at all.
MEGAN: Sorry. I don't...I didn't mean to hurt you. (A beat. MEGAN sets her drink down and looks around, maybe to leave)
DAVIS: I knew a nice young woman once who beat her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb. So if you think about it, you're pretty tame in the scheme of things.
MEGAN: Really?
DAVIS: Yep. She claimed that, as a woman, her moods were tied to basic female biological cycles associated with the moon.
MEGAN: You're making that up to tease me.
DAVIS: No, it's absolutely true.
MEGAN: What happened to her?
DAVIS: They locked her up.
MEGAN: How awful.
DAVIS: She was crazy.
MEGAN: You sound like a cop. Or a bar tender.
DAVIS: I do?
MEGAN: Yeah. They see people go crazy all the time.
DAVIS: Just goes to show you shouldn't make assumptions.
MEGAN: My point exactly. (a beat) So what do you do, Davis? If you're not a cop or a bar tender
DAVIS: I'm a journalist. The woman I told you about? I reported her trial for a paper up north.
MEGAN: Wow. You're a writer?
DAVIS: No. A journalist.
MEGAN: (laughs) Journalists never let the facts get in the way of a good story, isn't that what they say?
DAVIS: Something like that, yeah.
MEGAN:So do you really make stuff up?
DAVIS: No.
MEGAN: Come on, you can tell me.
DAVIS: Well, we sometimes... embellish. If we need to.
MEGAN: If you need to.
DAVIS: Right.
MEGAN: I bet you're a good liar.
DAVIS: Not really.
MEGAN: Do you lie to your wife?
DAVIS: I'm not married.
MEGAN: Ha!
DAVIS: Ha?
MEGAN: You're right. You're a terrible liar!
DAVIS: (holds up his finger with his wedding ring on it for Megan to see.) You think I'm lying because you already checked this out, probably before you sat down. Am I right?
MEGAN: Maybe.
DAVIS: What you don't know is that my Grandmother was half Madagascan. And on her deathbed she gave me this ring as a love charm, to bring me happiness with women. It's an old family tradition.
MEGAN: Really?
DAVIS: The women in her family believe that if a male relative is given a ring that was worn by a woman in a happy marriage, that ring will leak love into his skin and this will attract him a beautiful, wise wife. My grandmother's last desire was that I should be as happy in marriage as she had been with my Grandfather.
MEGAN: Wow, that's lovely.
DAVIS: Yeah. (a beat) Except I'm making it up.
MEGAN: (slaps his arm playfully) Ooh! Unfair.
DAVIS: Got you.
MEGAN: So you are a good liar.
DAVI:S Yep.
MEGAN: And you are married.
DAVIS: (a beat) Yes. I am.
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