Next on the script shelf
Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is William Inge’s Picnic
Anyway – I love William Inge – I’ve done two of his plays (one to great success, and one to … er … not so great success) but still – I love him.
He’s such an AMERICAN playwright. He’s a meat and potatoes type writer – he has all the essentials down – he knows how to do exposition, set up a plot, throw in some obstacles, create three-dimensional characters, write believable dialogue that illuminates the personalities but also pushes the story along – These are all almost lost arts in terms of playwriting. Any playwright who wants to take a look at how to do some of these really technical and yet so important story-telling things – would do well to look at Inge. He does it effortlessly – you never see the strings moving, you never sense the playwright there, manipulating events from behind the curtain.
If you’re interested, I wrote a long piece about William Inge a while back. I LOVE his plays – they aren’t done all that much now because – well, it’s weird – but they are dated. They are totally “period pieces” now. The repressive world of the 1950s that he depicts is gone. You cannot transfer his plays to other eras and have them work. You have to “go back” and do them in the time they were written. He is very much of his time. That’s not an insult. I think he, more than any other playwright writing at that moment, captured a slice of American life – or – to be more accurate – a part of the American psyche.
There’s a great tension in his plays – between freedom and responsibility, between love and sex, between male and female, between brains and beauty – He was always pitting these opposing forces against one another – and in his view, there really wasn’t a right answer. You had to look within yourself. Characters who were not able to do that, who just went along with what they thought they should be doing, are seen as tragic.
I did a production of Picnic – it was a really important show for me. I was 16, 17 – and it was the first time I really worked. I had been in shows before, I had been good, whatever – but Picnic was my first real part – that I worked on, and researched, and did preparation for – It’s the birth of me as a real actress.
Here’s a little photo album I put together of the transformation of my character in that play – Millie – tomboyish Millie.
The plot of Picnic is relatively simple. It takes place in Independence, Kansas, a small town. Flo is a mother of two daughters. Flo had married a handsome sexy wild man who ended up abandoning the family. One of Inge’s subtle points – and he never comes out and says it – but it is THERE – is that in order to have sex, you had to get married. Many people made big errors in choosing their mate – because they couldn’t get all that stuff out of their system – so they married for sex – and of course, chose unwisely. This is what happens in the course of the play. Flo, obviously, married because her attraction to her husband was white-hot – and he turned out to be a jagoff. She is determined that her daughters will not make the same mistake. Her older daughter, Madge, is pretty, a beauty-queen (literally) – and she is dating a “nice boy” named Alan – who is boring and conventional. But then – a drifter comes to town – and lives in the house next door – and his name is Hal. Hal messes up the conventions. Madge basically falls into wild lust with him – but because she can’t accept being a “bad girl” – well, there’s all sorts of ramifications. They MUST get married – but marriage to Hal will be, you know it, a disaster. The younger daughter, Millie, the girl I played, is 16. She’s a determined tomboy – mainly because she doesn’t want ANY part of ANY of that. She will live her OWN life. She will play by her OWN rules, and she can see that the rules for women SUCK so she will dress like a boy, and not follow all the silly conventions. She is William Inge’s stand-in. She wants to be a writer and eventually move to New York. And you know that she will do it.
Here’s a scene in the beginning of the play between Flo and her two daughters.
From Picnic
FLO. Did you and Alan have a good time on your date last night?
MADGE. Uh-huh.
FLO. What’d you do?
MADGE. We went over to his house and he played some of his classical records.
FLO. [after a pause] Then what’d you do?
MADGE. Drove over to Cherryvale and had some barbecue.
FLO. [a hard question to ask] Madge, does Alan ever — make love?
MADGE. When we drive over to Cherryvale we always park the car by the river and get real romantic.
FLO. Do you let him kiss you? After all, you’ve been going together all summer.
MADGE. Of course I let him.
FLO. Does he ever want to go beyond kissing?
MADGE. [embarrassed] Mom!
FLO. I’m your mother, for heaven’s sake! These things have to be talked about. Does he?
MADGE. Well — yes.
FLO. Does Alan get mad if you — won’t?
MADGE. No.
FLO. [to herself, puzzled] He doesn’t …
MADGE. Alan’s not like most boys. He doesn’t wanta do anything he’d be sorry for.
FLO. Do you like it when he kisses you?
MADGE. Yes.
FLO. You don’t sound very enthusiastic.
MADGE. What do you expect me to do — pass out every time Alan puts his arm around me?
FLO. No, you don’t have to pass out. [gives Madge the dress she has been sewing on] Here. Hold this dress up in front of you. It’d be awfully nice to be married to Alan. You’d live in comfort the rest of your life, with charge accounts at all the stores, automobiles and trips. You’d be invited by all his friends to parties in their homes and at the Country Club.
MADGE. [a confession] Mom, I don’t feel right with those people.
FLO. Why not? You’re as good as they are.
MADGE. I know, Mom, but all of Alan’s friends talk about college and trips to Europe. I feel left out.
FLO. You’ll get over those feelings in time. Alan will be going back to school in a few weeks. You better get busy.
MADGE. Busy what?
FLO. A pretty girl doesn’t have long — just a few years. Then she’s the equal of kings and she can walk out of a shanty like this and live in a palace with a doting husband who’ll spend his life making her happy.
MADGE. [to herself] I know.
FLO. Because once, once she was young and pretty. If she loses her chance then, she might as well throw all her prettiness away. [giving Madge the dress]
MADGE. [holding the dress before her as Flo checks length] I’m only eighteen.
FLO. And next summer you’ll be nineteen, and then twenty, and then twenty-one, and then the years’ll start going by so fast you’ll lose count of them. First thing you know, you’ll be forty, still selling candy at the dime store.
MADGE. You don’t have to get morbid.
MILLIE. [comes out of the house with sketch book, sees Madge holding dress before her] Everybody around here gets to dress up and go places except me.
MADGE. Alan said he’d try to find you a date for the picnic tonight.
MILLIE. I don’t want Alan asking any of these crazy boys in town to take me anywhere.
MADGE. Beggars can’t be choosers!
MILLIE. You shut up.
FLO. Madge, that was mean. There’ll be dancing at the pavilion tonight. Millie should have a date, too.
MADGE. If she wants a date, why doesn’t she dress up and act decent?
MILLIE. Cause I’m gonna dress and act the way I want to, and if you don’t like it you know what you can do!
MADGE. Always complaining because she doesn’t have any friends, but she smells so bad people don’t want to be near her!
FLO. Girls, don’t fight.
MILLIE. [ignoring Flo] La-de-da! Madge is the pretty one — but she’s so dumb they almost had to burn the schoolhouse down to get her out of it!
MADGE. That’s not so!
MILLIE. Oh, isn’t it? You never would have graduated if it hadn’t been for Jumpin’ Jeeter.
FLO. [trying at least to keep up with the scrap] Who’s Jumpin’ Jeeter?
MILLIE. Teaches history. Kids call him Jumpin’ Jeeter cause he’s so jumpy with all the pretty girls in his classes. He was flunking Madge till she went in his room and cried and said … [mimics Madge] “I just don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t pass history!”
MADGE. Mom, she’s making that up.
MILLIE. Like fun I am! You couldn’t even pass Miss Sydney’s course in shorthand and you have to work in the dime store!
MADGE. [the girls know each other’s most sensitive spots] You are a goon!
FLO. [giving up] Oh, girls!
MILLIE. [furious] Madge, you slut! You take that back or I’ll kill you! [She goes after Madge who screams and runs on the porch]
FLO. Girls! What will the neighbors say!
[Millie gets hold of Madge’s hair and yanks. Flo has to intercede]
MILLIE. No one can call me goon and get by with it!
FLO. You called her worse names!
MILLIE. It doesn’t hurt what names I call her! She’s pretty, so names don’t bother her at all! She’s pretty, so nothing else matters. [She storms inside]
FLO. Poor Millie!
MADGE. [raging at the injustice] All I ever hear is “poor Millie”, and poor Millie won herself a scholarship for four whole years of college!
FLO. A girl like Millie can need confidence in other ways. [This quiets Madge. There is a silence]
MADGE. [subdued] Mom, do you love Millie more than me?
FLO. Of course not!
MADGE. Sometimes you act like you did.
FLO. [with warmth, trying to effect an understanding] You were the first born. Your father thought the sun rose and set in you. He used to carry you on his shoulder for all the neighborhood to see. But things were different when Millie came.
MADGE. How?
FLO. [with misgivings] They were just — different. Your father wasn’t home much. The night Millie was born he was with a bunch of his wild friends at the road house.
MADGE. I loved Dad.
FLO. [a little bitterly] Oh, everyone loved your father.
MADGE. Did you?
FLO. [after a long pause of summing up] Some women are humiliated to love a man.
MADGE. Why?
FLO. [thinking as she speaks] Because — a woman is weak to begin with, I suppose, and sometimes — her love for him makes her feel — almost helpless. And maybe she fights him — cause her love makes her seem so dependent. [There is another pause. Madge ruminates]
MADGE. Mom, what good is it to be pretty?
FLO. What a question!
MADGE. I mean it.
FLO. Well — pretty things are rare in this life.
MADGE. But what good are they?
FLO. Well — pretty things — like flowers and sunsets and rubies — and pretty girls, too — they’re like billboards telling us life is good.
MADGE. But where do I come in?
FLO. What do you mean?
MADGE. Maybe I get tired of being looked at.
FLO. Madge!
MADGE. Well, maybe I do!
FLO. Don’t talk so selfish!
MADGE. I don’t care if I am selfish. It’s no good just being pretty. It’s no good!
HAL. [comes running on from passageway] Mam, is it all right if I start a fire?
FLO. [jumps to see Hal] What?
HAL. The nice lady, she said it’s a hot enough day already and maybe you’d object.
FLO. [matter-of-factly] I guess we can stand it.
HAL. Thank you, ma’am. [Hal runs off]
FLO. [looking after him] He just moves right in whether you want h im to or not!
MADGE. I knew you wouldn’t like him when I first saw him.
FLO. Do you?
MADGE. I don’t like him or dislike him. I just wonder what he’s like.
One of the great, great plays of all time. And LOVE the pictures. I love, love drunk Millie!!!!!!
Brilliant.
I had never been drunk before when I did that play – so the director had to sit me down and describe it for me. hahahaha
I didn’t want to go out and “research” getting so wasted that I puked. I still remember this director – puffing on his pipe – intimidating as hell – saying, “You sort of feel like the room is spinning … it’s an awful feeling …”
hahahaha