THE STORIES: A therapy session like
Group by Ethan Silverman could drive you—crazy! In this short piece, four self-absorbed people, with petty problems, vie for their therapist's attention, while a newcomer to the group looks on in horror. (2 men, 4 women.)
Mixed Babies by Oni Faida Lampley is set in Oklahoma City in the mid 1970s. Reva, a black girl of sixteen, and four of her friends are having a slumber party. The girls are in the process of discovering who they are in terms of themselves, their race and their womanhood. Reva believes that she will be able to find something special in herself by embracing her African heritage. In the pursuit of that Reva wants to undergo a "Rite of Passage" that she has found in a book on African cultures. Her friends, Andee, who's happy to simply be a middle-class teenaged girl, Thommie, who chooses from week to week what race she wants to be, Dena, who's exploring sex as a means of self-definition, and Shalanda, who is shy, a compulsive eater and who looks up to the others in her search for "how to be," regard Reva's plan skeptically but agree to help. The Rite of Passage proceeds sloppily and goes unfinished, but Reva gains something from it and as the morning dawns she may be beginning her life as a woman. (6 women.)
The five characters in A.M.L. by Jacquelyn Reingold represent the thoughts and feelings of a single woman who is trying to cope with her boyfriend's Leukemia. Each of the women depicts a different stage of the illness and the relationship. By the end we realize that the boyfriend has survived, the woman is stronger, but the relationship is over; and her five separate parts have grown into one. (5 women.)
In
Saint Stanislaus Outside the House by Patrick Breen five young punks pass the night on the stoop of St. Stanislaus' church on East 7th Street in the East Village of New York, holding their own Academy Awards ceremony for their favorite cartoons, with Dumbo winning in nine categories. As the sun rises, they pair off and contemplate their place in the world. (3 men, 2 women.)
