Gloria; 3m/3w
THE STORY: This funny, trenchant, and powerful play follows an ambitious group of editorial assistants at a notorious Manhattan magazine, each of whom hopes for a starry life of letters and a book deal before they turn thirty. But when an ordinary humdrum workday becomes anything but, the stakes for who will get to tell their own story become higher than ever.
Labels: BIPOC cast, BIPOC Playwright, comedy, contemporary, drama
posted by Larisa at 11:23 AM
6 Comments:
Based on the description of this, I liked it a lot more than I was expecting. It made me think about Marjorie Prime in the structure and the way it made me think. The shooting scene is pretty brutal and we would to think carefully about marketing and warnings. I think there are some really interesting ideas about how real-life violence is consumed as entertainment in the media, who owns trauma, how shooters and victims are portrayed, and how complex people are reduced to simplistic stories in a lot of these situations, i.e. you can be a victim AND a jerk. It is a tricky one to market though.
With the constant stream of shootings I am not sure this will be well received. I was not enthralled with the story and it actually felt a little long, don't know why. Plus someone will need to be creative to do this in the round.
I found it to be very wordy and long. The shooting was a real turnoff for me and made me very uncomfortable especially since it happened before intermission! I think our audience would be heading for the exits early. No for me.
I think there's some interesting thoughts in this piece, but there's too many challenges.
The character descriptions were very race-specific. That might be a potential challenge, but not something we can't overcome (BUT LET’S NOT DO RACEFACE OR RACIAL MASKS!!!) Likewise, the language (Chinese or Korean) might be a stronger challenge. I certainly don’t feel comfortable with the idea of a person faking one of these languages.
The way the shooting is written might be a challenge. It might be very graphic to have a realistic-looking gun go off several times in our small/intimate space (I'm thinking about something that makes the sound of a starter pistol). That alone might scare people away.
The way this script is written, I think it wants to be a movie more than it wants to be a play. There are too many moments that rely on specific visuals.
I also suspect this play is still a work-in-progress. There are lots of typos. Maybe that would mean the playwright would be open to changes? But are there too many things to change to make it worth our while?
I was absolutely not expecting the shooting to happen-- I was expecting a dark comedic office story, which it is in part, but obviously, there is much more than that. I think its great the playwright is a POC and that the cast is so diverse. The on-stage murders and suicide are crucial to the story but would need to be carefully done, with trigger warnings given in the program and potentially before the start of the show. Overall, I was super impressed by the pacing, thematic exploration, dialogue, and emotional journey of the play.
In the end, I found this play too grim. It's a no for me.
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