Millie, the part I played, was a 16 year old girl, shy, awkward, but covering it up with tomboy brashness and rebellion. She smoked in secret. She screamed obscenities at the newspaper boy. And yet deep inside, she kept alive her dreams: to go to New York and be a writer. She was only a child, but she knew that her life, her spirit, depended on getting out of that small dusty town. Millie is William Inge, she is the mouthpiece of the playwright.
Each act begins with Millie alone on stage (which is not an accident. That’s the key that she is actually William Inge.)
Act I: The last day of summer. That night will be the picnic. Millie sneaks out of the house before all the guests arrive, to have a smoke beneath the porch. This is just before she bodily attacks the newspaper boy, whom she despises. She is a wildcat, a tomboy, like a savage.
Act II: The picnic. The act opens with Millie emerging from the house – no longer in her jeans and sneakers, but now in a pouffy pink dress, ready for her “date” to the picnic. Trying to be grown-up. She looks ridiculous, but it’s somehow touching, too. The touching hope of adolescence.
Act III: The next morning. First day of school. Millie, now in her school clothes, and pissed off as all hell – and also hungover because she drank an entire bottle of whiskey the night before – sits beneath the porch, glowering, and smoking. So MAD that she is still just a teenager, and that everyone around her is obviously insane.
It is a full transformation of character through the three acts.
Millie at the start of Act I.
Millie at the start of Act 2.
Millie at the start of Act 3.
