Mike Mariano

A site redesign is still in progress, but I think all of the plays have landed in the right spots. Ironically, my more recent work is temporarily stuck with their old designs. Feedback is welcome, let me know if you get hopelessly lost.

New is a Productions page, which will serve as an archive for productions of my work. I will soon tear through my scrapbooks and update the links which currently go nowhere.

Here’s the thing: I have a very incomplete history of my work. There are cast members, performance locations, and even entire productions that I know next to nothing about. I need your help!

If you have been involved in any production of my plays (The Marley Show, The Bill Show, and Jack, Wanda, and Ben especially), please write to me! Let me know names, dates, etc. If you can also send me something like a program, please do so.

Some groups have already sent me plenty, and that’s great. You will see it here soon.

I finished a draft of Zenyatta Piñata last night. (So we’re keeping score correctly, that makes a draft of Zenyatta Piñata, a first draft of the Platonic Philosopher Kings, and a super-expanded Jack, Wanda, and Ben that I’m holding back from you.) Right now it ends on such an awful note. Like Muggled, it’s a sick joke with the joke removed. I don’t find anything funny in ZP. And I like it that way. It’s right now a ten-minute play. Should I add more to it? I definitely have more material, but I don’t think it would add anything new. You may see it soon.

After subsequent drafts of Zenyatta Piñata and Philosopher Kings, the next play will likely be a one-act Ibsen parody. The Ibsen play, Philosopher Kings, and Menage a Sartre may all fit together as a evening of one-acts.

Does this amalgamation count as the full-length play I promised you in January? No! One-acts are one-acts, no matter how I group them. Yet apart from Now Departing, I have only one modest idea for a full-length play. And the only line of dialogue I have so far is “Tutan-cummin’ on her Nefer-titties.”

Comparatively, I suppose that’s a good start.

In less frivolous news, I have completed an addition to Jack, Wanda, and Ben that expands it from a six and a half minute play into a fifteen minute play, at least. Wanda gets a little more range, Ben gets a little more sympathetic, and Jack gets insufferably shrill. I like it!

Will you see this addition on the site? I’m mulling it over.

Also, this revision should have been done a year ago when I had the idea for it. Now I’m slacking off on my current projects.

What projects? Before I picked up JWB, I was working on:

1. My piñata play, tentatively titled Zenyatta Piñata, though it has nothing to do with Sting. And….
2. My Plato’s Republic spoof, titled Philosopher Kings. If successful, this would be a companion piece to Menage a Sartre.

What about my other ideas? Almost all of them are dead, including the two and a half years in the making James and Kathryn. What stopped me cold? I watched Strange Days two weeks ago. It showed me what little real-life inspiration I have to work from.