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<\/i>, by Paul Selig. An end-of-the-world story, along the lines of Stephen King’s The Stand<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0451169530\")
<\/i>, where all of humanity has been wiped out by a plague, only in Terminal Bar<\/i> it is explicitly AIDS that is the killer. It takes place in a small dump of a bar in New York City, with decaying corpses all around, and three people – the last people on earth – have gathered. One is a prostitute, worldly-wise and cynical, who, as her specialty act for her clients, dresses up as the Statue of Liberty and roller skates around. (Alex played that part in a production<\/a>. I’m so obsessed with the play that I’m jealous – I want to be in it!!!) One of the characters is a gay boy who has been living in the underworld for a long time, having anonymous sex in the “glory holes” bathrooms, and he is terrified and bereft at the death all around him. And the last character – the character I am dying to play – is a Southern lunatic who has gotten on a bus and somehow ended up in New York. She insists she is a virgin, that her marriage was not consummated – and yet she also appears to be vastly pregnant. The pregnancy turns out to be a fake, she has stuffed a feather pillow up her dress. She is clearly dying of AIDS as well, and her hair is falling out in chunks – but she is living in such total denial that she carries a super-strength bottle of Aqua Net around and teases her hair until it is in a tower on her head, re-applying makeup over and over and over until she is caked with it … and then, to cap it all off, taking Polaroids of herself every five minutes to see what she looks like. All the mirrors have been smashed in Terminal Bar. I love that character. She has some of the best lines in the play. She may sound like an idiot, but she’s not. She just has no language to describe the new world she is in. She has a wise-cracking air herself, she’s a steel magnolia indeed – funny funny lines … and she finds herself almost falling in love with the Statue of Liberty, or lust, more like it … but again, she has no language to provide context. To say she’s gay is unthinkable to her (I’ll take Ted Haggard for 200, Alex). But things slowly start to break down, as the three cavort and drink and avoid the corpses and refuse to talk about the plague … These people did not know each other before meeting up here. It is the end of the road.<\/p>\nI love the play. It’s only a one-act but it feels full-length, with three awesome juicy characters.<\/p>\n
I worked on it in grad school, playing the part of my dreams, and it was a lot of fun, although frustrating, because all I wanted to do was rehearse the play for realz and put it up!<\/p>\n
The funniest and weirdest thing is that I got a Polaroid camera (of course) to take photos of myself through the scene. The whole point is that she has to look at herself immediately – the Polaroids become her mirror. “How am I doing? Do I look sick? Do I need more Aqua Net? More rouge?”<\/p>\n
It’s grotesque. But somehow hilarious as well.<\/p>\n
It’s almost unheard-of to take pictures of yourself in the middle of a scene<\/i>, so these two photos make me laugh. The second one is TERRIFYING. She really is under the impression that she looks like a million bucks!<\/p>\n
And please, where did my upper lip go? I have never smiled like that before or since, thank the good Lord above, JESUS.<\/p>\n
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I’ve always been a little bit obsessed with the play Terminal Bar, by Paul Selig. An end-of-the-world story, along the lines of Stephen King’s The Stand, where all of humanity has been wiped out by a plague, only in Terminal … Continue reading