Stonecoast Review
The Official Literary Journal of University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA
DRAMATIC WORKS
What is held within a scene
By Julieanna Blackwell
trigger warning: gun violence
SCENE
Stage.
A hospital bed is stage right. An unconscious teenaged girl lies in the bed. She has a breathing tube. Other tubes crisscross her chest and are attached to a monitor, and intravenous bags are affixed to a pole at the head of the bed. JENNIFER Westerly sits in a sturdy wooden chair next to the bed. She holds the girl’s hand with her right hand and balls handkerchief in her left.
A middle-aged MAN in a gray suit enters stage left. He is followed by two more men in suits. They remain behind, standing silently behind the MAN.…
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A marriage is a story we tell and keep telling
By Danielle Frimer
These are characters that could probably carry on a full discussion while performing open heart surgery. Their conversation is so second-nature that it’s almost as if we’re hearing the inside of one brain. Things can be tossed off that (with anyone else) would need to be emphasized or clearly articulated to carry meaning. This is particularly true in the play’s first few beats, where dialogue and humor are used to distract/comfort, but their minds (mostly Em’s) are elsewhere. Besides this, they are quick thinkers and talkers, which is heightened in moments of anxiety, such as this one. Don’t let their comfort with one another trick you into thinking they are actually comfortable. They are not. This is all (or mostly) to say: a brisk overall tempo propelled by a humming anxiety beneath the text will earn us the more joyful, breathful, landed moments. Choose them discerningly.….
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waiting for gilbert
By Kellie Pettyjohn
Act I, Scene I
(DOG wags his tail, runs to the window and jumps on the windowsill.)
DOG
I think it’s him! He’s back! I knew he would come back.
CAT
He is not back. That is the neighbor. See? He is walking past our house.
(CAT languidly licks her paws while lying on the back of the couch. DOG jumps down from the windowsill.)
DOG
He’ll come back. He always comes back. Doesn’t he?
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