Mike Mariano

August Wilson’s plays are no longer as off-limits as I thought:

The Signature Theatre Company season of Wilson’s work, previously terminated by his estate, will now proceed as scheduled. This is the only sane resolution, really, but I’m very uncomfortable that a cancellation occurred in the first place.

But what almost didn’t happen professionally has always been in process at Woodlands High School in Hartsdale, NY. Last month the school’s drama students began doing what Signature almost could not:

Starting with Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, they will present two Wilson shows a year for the next five years, ending with Gem of the Ocean.

Director John MacLean is calling this “The August Wilson Project.”

I think it’s impressive enough that Woodlands is doing two straight plays a year, let alone making it part of a project that will last longer than any one student’s high school career. Also impressive is that, judging by pictures from their recent production of The King and I, Woodlands seems to be a genuinely multi-ethnic school.

Signature plans to only read Wilson’s entire cycle, fully producing just three of his plays. Seeing full productions—with a gradually changing ensemble—is daring for any theatre company, let alone a high school drama class. Here’s wishing the students of Woodlands High School, present and future, the best of luck.

Hey, kids! How about some Magical Realism?

So a set of siblings have an uncontrollable urge to use the bathroom at 9:18 every evening.

Soon they learn their father has the urge to drink water every night at the same time!

Huh? Huh? Like it?

Well too bad; it’s going into Eating Disorder. If I ever write it.

My parents recorded and played for me a recent Saturday Night Live sketch called “The Coma”, which strongly reminded them of my play Jack, Wanda, and Ben.

“The Coma” features a man who emerges from a one-day coma to find that his girlfriend has met, romanced, and married another man. The sketch is definitely playing with the same premise as Jack, Wanda, and Ben, but allows itself to be cruder and sillier. Both “The Coma” and JWB are punctuated by exasperated utterances of “It was forty-five minutes!”/“It was one freakin’ day!”

Although it lasts for only two lines, I liked the shared moment of tenderness between the coma victim and his girlfriend. (“You changed your hair….”) When rewriting my play, I wanted to downplay the gimicky ending and put some emotion into this new arrangement. It’s enchanting to see people try to make an unworkable situation work.

And I suppose the compliment Jack, Wanda, and Ben received from the Orange County Register—“worthy of the early days of Saturday Night Live”—now also applies to the show’s later days.