Mike Mariano

Something’s troubling about the current off-Broadway production of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman. Until tonight I couldn’t put my finger on it. Last week’s reviews at nytheatre.com and in The New York Observer describe the play as I remember it, and the production photos show a cast with the right attitude. So what’s wrong?

Tomorrow’s Village Voice tells us:

Never has “getting a bite of the apple” proved to be as dangerous as it is in Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman … where a flirtation between a black man, Clay (Dulé Hill), and a curvaceous blonde, Lula (Jennifer Mudge), takes on monumental proportions.

A blonde! That’s the problem with this production! Baraka’s script differs significantly:

Lula is a tall, slender, beautiful woman with long red hair hanging straight down her back, wearing only loud lipstick in somebody’s good taste. She is eating an apple, very daintily.

What does this mean? Jennifer Mudge, however qualified, is horribly miscast! And director Bill Duke is getting involved in some heavy-handed reinterpretation.

The moral of this story? Redheads, redheads, redheads.

mikemariano.com presents:

True Playwright Confessions

This weekend I came across the code of a few programs I wrote in QBASIC at the tender age of fifteen. This was the twilight of my programming career, but the beginning stages of my career writing for the stage.

After learning BASIC, I created a few “Choose Your Own Adventure”-styled games with my cousins. They featured film noir parodies, imitation Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure time travel exploits, and a high-concept text adventure concerning a fictional attempted assassination of John Major! I also copied a blackjack program from 3-2-1 Contact magazine that I could never get to work.

The program I’m most proud of is an RPG in miniature that I created from scratch. Just a few stages more complex than Progress Quest, it allowed a player to press the arrow keys to move up and down a “map” (represented by a set of coordinates). As the player moved, he entered into random battles and encountered traveling salesmen. There wasn’t much to do besides kill monsters, win gold, spend the gold on healing potions, and continue killing—essentially, I was creating my own Diablo years ahead of time.

I abandoned the program before adding specific locations and actual goals, but I did write an introduction to the game and its fantasy world. I also created a scripted encounter for my role-playing hero upon his arrival at a specific location. These prose sections were written in haste as a proof of concept; they were never meant to be serious writing. With time, they have gone from mildly embarrassing to completely hilarious. Let me present selections from RPG2.BAS!

After 2 years in the dungeon of the dragon/man Geess, you are finally released and sent home thinnly [sic] armed to your castle. Something isn’t right though. The sky is more smoke-filled [sic] and redder than before. Then you realize the truth; your land has been abandoned and has fallen into ruin. Depending only on an old map and a few potions for survival, you must figure out what threw your land into dispair. [sic]

Press Q to return to the options menu

And another:

After the wizard Tuhess turned the inhabitants of the castle to stone, the dwarves of an allied kingdom sent some of their finest warriors to protect the castle from invading monsters. Some dwarves greet you as you come up to the castle’s gates. The leader of the soldiers, Denman Wyndag, speaks with you in the main tent.

“Greetings, warrior!” he says to you, “We have awaited your arrival. My warriors know of a wizard who may be able to break the spell on this castle. His name is Cagdeb, and was last seen in the Swamp Tunnels.”

He marks the location of the tunnels on your map and wishes you luck as you leave the castle, wounds healed.

What vivid writing! I could have been that Eragon kid!

I realize, now that I’m writing a play based in part on I Dream of Jeannie, that I have not seen an episode of I Dream of Jeannie for 12 years.

Maybe more than 12 years. I saw the film Apollo 13 in 1995, which featured a small clip of Jeannie—an example of what Americans in 1970 would rather watch than a NASA launch. That was my final Jeannie sighting—until tonight.

Through the power of BitTorrent, I am watching the (unaired?) pilot episode of I Dream of Jeannie and taking notes. I might pass out before I finish, but it’s vital that I refamiliarize myself with Majors Nelson and Healey.

Months ago I spent long hours in the Princeton University library, poring over Arabic myths I needed for the first act of As You Wish. Now I’m watching sitcoms. I guess I won’t blame you if you leave after the first act.