Playfulness

On foggy winter weekend mornings, I hide at the beach.

Some people run away to the circus.

I ran off to the theater.

Last fall, I spent 32.5 hours holed away in the black-walled, cavernous confines of the Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre in Alumnae Hall at Wellesley College.

Taught by a seasoned director of critically acclaimed plays, I, along with ten budding playwrights, sat onstage around a rectangular table armed solely with a copy of Jeffrey Hatcher's "The Art & Craft of Playwriting" and our imaginations.

The class came with a warning: The material presented, discussed and written will contain a range of human behavior from ugly to beautiful, shocking to tender, silly to mortifying, bad to good. These works of art will, with intention, provoke strong emotions and evoke strong memories and associations.”

By the end of the course, we had written and read aloud 50 pages of our own scripts and literally became the playwright of one of our plays performed by the acting class.

This is an excerpt from my one-act play “Better Angels.” The actors were amazing. It is a true story based on a newspaper interview I conducted many years ago. The names are fictitious.

LESLIE: The telephone pole was inside the car; my feet were in the engine compartment. I remember not being able to feel my legs. I panicked because I couldn’t catch my breath.

 (Leslie’s eyes fill with tears.)

LESLIE: I actually saw my life flash before my eyes at the moment of impact. I remember seeing family members who had passed on. I heard their voices calling me.

KATE: Oh, my God, Leslie! You were dying.

LESLIE: Then I saw a hand coming through the twisted metal, and I reached for it. She told me she was a nurse. I told her about the voices. She told me not to listen to them. I was going to be fine. It wasn’t my time yet.

(Kate wipes away tears.)

LESLIE: It took more than an hour for the emergency personnel to cut me out of the car with the Jaws of Life. All the while, I kept asking for the nurse who had promised not to leave me. But the paramedics told me that there was nobody there and that they would take care of me.

(Leslie cries. Kate reaches for her hand.)

LESLIE: Later I found out that my legs and pelvis were shattered. I had massive internal injuries and bleeding, as well as a blood clot. I received Last Rites.

(Leslie suddenly stands up and walks around the room.)

LESLIE: I spent three months in the hospital’s trauma unit, and it took a year of intensive physical therapy for me to walk again.

 (Kate is visibly shaken by the revelation. Her phone rings, and she lets it go to voicemail. Leslie composes herself and goes on.)

LESLIE: A short time after my discharge from the hospital, I arranged to meet the paramedics who had saved my life. They couldn’t believe I was there. They assumed I wasn’t going to make it. Once again, I asked them about the nurse. They told me there was a witness walking his dog in the woods, but there was no nurse.

KATE: No nurse?

LESLIE: The paramedic said that it may have been my mind playing games with me. My body was in shock.

(Leslie sits down.)

LESLIE: Kate, I know that a guardian angel came to me on the night of the accident. I still feel she’s watching over me. It’s a sense of relief – almost like an extra security blanket. I always feel protected.

KATE: I believe you.

CURTAIN