Mike Mariano

Here’s the thing about Dean.

(7:21) Dean Hurley: btw - i noticed this thing with u and peeps interacting with inanimate objects

(7:21) Dean Hurley: couch, stuffed animal

Sometimes you ask questions.

(7:53) Mike Mariano: Wait—

(7:53) Mike Mariano: You just noticed this NOW?!

(7:53) Dean Hurley: lmao

(7:54) Dean Hurley: i am slow

(7:55) Mike Mariano: This has been my oeuvre for years!

Sometimes you don’t.

(8:13) Dean Hurley: i want a cat

(8:32) Dean Hurley: I WANT A FUCKING CAT

Wish Fulfillment is here.

You can now read a PDF and plain text version of my one-act play right here on the site. Enjoy it!

Some quick notes: all three of the new additions are not brand-new plays. Unleash Your Inner Spader and Wish Fulfillment were finished in May, while Muggled was finished in July. Muggled was spiffed up for production, but the other two plays are not too different from their first drafts. I’m unsure what my ultimate intentions are for them. I may use Wish Fulfillment as a jumping-off point for a new full-length play, but I don’t know yet if I have an idea big enough for a long play. Unleash Your Inner Spader would be right at home in a Couchophilia/Jack, Wanda, and Ben/Big Game evening of short plays, but is there another path for it to take?

And what do I do with the other plays that have at least a first draft underneath them, but you’ve never heard of?

The next thing you will probably see on the site is “the Chanel play” as previously whispered about. After that, I really want to get cracking on a full-length play. I just don’t know what.

Bonus Trivia: In Wish Fulfillment, the character Roger’s face is described as “ashen”, and he also complains of sunburn. But Roger is black! Is this an oversight on the part of your ethnocentric author? No; Roger’s skin is just lighter than you might think. To put this in terms you white college hipsters might understand, this was before Wesley Snipes. Get it? Good.

I have two pieces you may or may not be seeing soon on the site. My assignment for both was to write something funny and/or scary. I did neither.

Instead I offered a healthy dose of old-fashioned melodrama. Families in crisis! Tough moral decisions! Dialogue that would be laughable in almost any other context!

And I’ve done it before. What is the revelation of Alice’s sister in I Am The Devil if not melodrama? I don’t mind letting the characters get serious about the small stuff, but I hope they earn it first.

My short play Big Game is an absurd situation taken seriously by the actress for comic effect. These plays also have strange setups. One includes a priest trying to casually ignore the fact that he is bleeding heavily. The other has Harry Potter. But I think that I’ve written them as to kill any comic effect they have. And I think that might be best for them.

So am I letting the melodrama win over the comedy? I think I am. And so what? Have you never been melodramatic?

I actually have five “finished” short plays, but I don’t know what I want to do with them. Maybe I want to remake this entire website first. Stay tuned, folks.