Mike Mariano

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.

Many of the plays on this site, many of the plays I am currently writing, and, indeed, many of the plays written across time, let us imagine a sexuality that is not our own. We are allowed to absorb the knowledge of other bedrooms from a few yards away in a paid-for seat.

Why is love a spectator sport?

If I ever put all my short, sexy pieces together, I want to close it with some call to arms. Couchophilia is not only on stage. Couchophilia can be all around us. Or any type of “philia.” I can’t allow people to remain passive to basic humanity just because they see it simulated. The simulation is only a fraction of the real.

Here’s a recreation of many conversations:

Donna You know I’m planning to turn Couchophilia into a film, don’t you?

Mike Yeah, you’ve said that.

I have not discussed any details with Donna about her film, so I have not been sure how serious she is about all this.

But I suppose she is at least this serious.

Looks like I’ll have to end my willful ignorance of Donna’s efforts.