Four plays by Stephen Evans
The Visitation Quartet collects four plays by Stephen Evans.
The Ghost Writer, filled with gems from Shakespeare’s works and with a lighthearted style reminiscent of classic Broadway comedies, is a fast-paced, funny play that explores the spirit of creativity both mortal and immortal.
In Monuments, an aging Ralph Waldo Emerson, voyaging down the Nile river with his daughter, struggles with memory and memories.
In Tourists, audiences encounter three sets of characters on their own unique journeys. In A Visitor to your Planet, a boatman working on a beach encounters an alien life-form investigating extinction events. In Arc, ex-lovers meet a a train station after a funeral and wonder if it is too late for one more change of direction. In No Surprise, a person enters the realm of death and discovers the travel agent for the afterlife. Each of these vignettes explores a perspective on time, through which we are all only tourists.
In Spooky Action at a Distance, a despondent physicist chooses a Las Vegas casino hotel room to exit this world. In the midst of the attempt, he is interrupted by an exotic dancer in an angel costume delivering a birthday surprise to wrong room. What are the odds?
The Visitation Quartet collects four plays by Stephen Evans that explore ways in which encounters with the mysteries of the universe can shape our experience of life, and each other.
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Excerpt from Spooky Action at a Distance:
The door opens. We hear casino bells—down the hall but VERY LOUD.
HAROLD WILSON stumbles into the room with a suitcase and a large artist’s portfolio case. He is dressed in a tuxedo. The door closes behind him but stays slightly ajar.
Harold dumps everything into a jumble on the bed.
HAROLD: Let there be light.
He turns on a lamp, illuminating the room.
Harold removes a marker board and easel from the portfolio case. He sets up the easel and board, which has the equations written on it.
Harold stands back and chuckles.
At the dresser, he empties his pockets, dumping many silver dollars into a cardboard bucket that says Casino Voltaire. He places the suitcase on the dresser and removes a CD player, a bottle of scotch, a bottle of pills, a gun, and a rope tied in a hangman’s noose.
He swigs the scotch, and turns on the CD. The ‘Of Science and Learning’ section of Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra fills the room.
Harold shoves the bed under the ceiling fixture. He climbs up and ties the noose to the fixture. Then he climbs down, picks up the gun and the bottle of pills. He struggles to open the pills, finally succeeds, then pours them into his hand. He takes another swig but doesn’t swallow, then climbs back on the bed, mouth full, gun in one hand and pills in the other.
He accidentally hits the noose with his head. It swings back and forth. He swings his head back and forth, trying to slip into it, unsuccessfully.
here’s a knock at the door.
HAROLD (through a mouth full of scotch): Hmm HuHmmm. (Go away).
There’s another knock.
HAROLD: Hmm HummmHmmm. (I’m busy).
There is another knock, very insistent.
HAROLD: Hmm HuHmmm HuhHuhHuh. (Go away, God dammit).
The door swings open.
The light in the hallway is blinding. Casino bells blast in.
ANGEL appears, framed in the doorway, in a very sexy angel costume with gossamer wings visible behind her, a little bent. Her halo is straight and gleaming.
Harold spits out the scotch.
Drops the pills.
Falls off the bed.
Accidentally squeezes the trigger.
The gun fires.
Angel drops to the floor.
Harold rises.
HAROLD: Oh my God. I killed an angel.
He looks up.
HAROLD: That’s not good.
