Pitfalls and Treasures: A new 10-minute comedy/drama for 2 actors
Does the screech of a seagull symbolize Summer for anyone else here? What is a beach day without a seagull trying to snatch your french fry, right? Well, if you’re looking for a seagull perspective - and if you’re looking for a 2-person dark comedy/drama/comedy that can work for outdoor theater - check out my new 10-minute play, Pitfalls and Treasures. In it, Mary and Andrew are lonely and troubled seagulls, each ostracized by their former flocks. When Mary embarks on the desperate challenge of removing twine wrapped around Andrew’s leg, they both must decide how much to trust each other in the hope of finding a better life. Check out an excerpt or the complete play here.
This play is about, well, yes, seagulls. And being seagulls, in a parking lot, with a numb leg and no flock, the stakes are high. But it’s also about love and loss, hope and failure, trust and apprehension, desperation and resignation. And yes--also a seagull and a fry. It’s a bit dark, a bit funny and a bit sweet.
Pitfalls and Treasures is a play which offers a great deal of room for creativity to the actors and director, whether being used for a competition, festival, class material or full production. Making choices to physicalize a seagull is a fun challenge and the layers within the text are rich to explore (a piece of chocolate is not just a piece of chocolate!). The entire creative and technical team can sink their teeth into creating this world with as much absurdity or realism as they deem appropriate.
While this play works for theater in any setting, I wrote it specifically with an outdoor space in mind. A theater company I work with, Westchester Collaborative Theater, devised a pandemic-friendly outdoor theater production entitled The Parking Lot Plays. They sought short plays written for their particular train station parking lot, and this site-specific theater resulted in a wonderful diverse series of new plays (and an audience happy to sit in lawn chairs outdoors and experience some in-person theater!). I was happy Pitfalls and Treasures was part of that production (with a brilliant cast of Missy Flower and Rob McEvily, directed by super talented Melissa Nocera). To write it for this site, I literally closed my eyes, pictured their parking lot in my head and waited for a play to come to my mind. First came trash (sorry to say), then came seagulls (it’s near the Hudson River and no human voices were exciting me), then came a french fry and well, the dialogue followed.
While I haven’t read Chekhov in a few decades, you might discover an Easter egg within the characters themselves… Let me know if you find it.
Enjoy an excerpt to the play here or click below for the complete 10-minute play, Pitfalls and Treasures.