Mike Mariano

During my morning ablutions, I had two thoughts in mild opposition to each other. The first: “Do I have too much dated humor in my plays?” The second: “Can I put a ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ joke into Eating Disorder?

High minded, yes. But WWJD as a saleable concept actually dates back to the nineteenth century, and Christ Himself obviously much further. I thought of The Marley Show, almost six years old now. It uses easily dated humor through Rolling Stones songs and Michael Jackson’s plastic surgery, but these are still applicable topics today. Hey, even online trading, which I was embarrassed about in The Marley Show One Act, is still a reality. So despite my fears (or maybe my secret, nostalgic longings), I’m not outdated yet.

There are a couple of changes to the site today. The older plays have been reformatted to look mostly the same as the newer plays, and are on the site in crisp new PDF files.

But I couldn’t resist a little tinkering. Couchophilia now contains an additional “sex toy” scene, which was not performed at either TCNJ or with the Hunger Artists. (Because it wasn’t written yet.) And The Marley Show One Act contains two very minor changes that Dean and I were considering for our Marley Show, Third Edition. Minor stuff, but it’s worth the mention.

Now back to work!

On the virtues of short plays (which I’ve been working on) against the virtues of long plays (not for a while).

Was that a sentence?

Anyway, I’ve been been wondering what people think about plays of varying lengths. I think the idea behind each play dictates how long it can be. When I get the idea in my head for something like Couchophilia, I know I’m not going to be able to explore that topic in 90 minutes or so; it requires a short length of time.

Even with something like The Marley Show, which has seen different versions of different lengths, as Dean and I remove and replace the different plot threads, we come up with plays that last however long they need to.

So I think it’s unfair to say “Ten-minute plays are cheaper than full-length plays.” Or “Full-lengths are more boring then one-acts.” Every play has its own requirements, and even as they come to mind, I know what they will grow up to become.