An Occasional Impala

 

 

by George Savage Jr.

  

 

CAST:

(In order of appearance)

LISE ZETTL

VALENTINE MARIBOU

TOM MARIBOU/POLICEMAN (Offstage voices)

RADIO ROD

JEFF LIMOSIN

HAROLD STESNICK

VIVIAN BOWERSOX

OSCAR THORIASSEN (Offstage trumpet)

 

 

A note on LISE:  An au pair is a student from another country who lives with a family while he or she attends school.  In return this student helps out.  LISE mispronounces words but the actress playing LISE and the director may want to adapt her sentences to a specific country.  I've deliberately not set her as from any specific country to make casting more open.

 

 

TIME:

Mid-August, the late 1980s.

 

 

PLACE:

The kitchen dining room of a Mercer Island home.

 

 

ACTION:

Act I

Scene 1: Saturday morning……………………..1

Scene 2: That same afternoon…………………..5

Scene 3: The next day, Sunday afternoon………10

Scene 4: Later, the same afternoon……………..15

Scene 5: That evening…………………………..44

Scene 6: The next afternoon…………………….50

Scene 7: The following Wednesday afternoon…53

 

Act II   The following Friday evening………………….66

 

 

SET:

 

     Numerous homes, some on stilts, cling to the steep southeast side of Mercer Island, an affluent island across Lake Washington from Seattle, connected to the city by an interstate freeway bridge.  The Marabou home, like many of these houses built into a hill, has a back deck with a view. The deck need not be part of the set. There is an entrance, a door,  from the  deck.  Many people enter and exit through this door  which is the back door to the house.  There are windows looking out onto the deck and beyond it to  a view of the water and a distant snow-covered volcanic mountain, Mt. Rainer.  The stage set is the kitchen dining area..   A counter separates this dining area from kitchen.   The kitchen is  off stage. There is a phone and an intercom.  There is a wall with a large abstract oil painting on it.  There is a breakfast table with two chairs.  A hallway leads into the rest of the house. A futon bed will be moved into this room  after the first scene.

 

     Although it's not part of the set an understanding of the positioning of the house on it's  spacious parcel of land will help you understand the entrances and exits.  There is a big spacious level lawn in front and on the sides of the house. There is a front door.  A walkway leads around the side of the house and onto the deck in back.  Since Valentine hangs out in the back of the house people learn to go around to the back door. 

 

 

 

 

 

Short Biography of Playwright

 

George Savage Jr. is the son of a playwright, his father, with whom he collaborated for seventeen years in both Los Angeles and New York.  Together over many years they developed what became known as "a Savage play."  Since his father's death in 1977 George has continued to write "Savage plays."

 

In the 1970s George Jr. had his own traveling theatrical troupe, the Hungry Mule Players, in California's Gold Rush country.  He's been writing Seattle plays and living in Seattle during the 1980s  and 1990'S but currently, in 1995,  divides his time between Seattle and Colfax, California.

 

 

Short History of the Play

 

The playwright was a canvasser for WashPIRG for 23 nights, worked event parking, including Lot 235 south of the Kingdome for Seahawks games, with a trumpet player, and was a chore worker for a prophetess in her 90s.  His brother lived four years in Durban, South Africa, and his son owned an Impala and named the play.

 

An Occasional Impala was developed over a period of  years in Doric Wilsons's playwrights' workshop, scene by scene.  A one-act version that takes place in a parking lot was done in the 1988 New City Theater Directors' Festival directed by Bruce McLean.  The big technical challenge was to tell the whole story in a single set.  The playwright finally decided on the kitchen.

 

A 90-minute version of the play was produced for one performance in the 1988 New City Theater Playwrights Festival directed by Eric Lewis.  In August of l994 the play was given a full production by Timothy Mooney at Stage Two in Waukegan Illinois.  It ran 9 performances and was performed in repertory with two other original works.  This version is a revision based on that production.

 


 

 

Short Synopsis of Play

 

An Occasional Impala is about a Mercer Island woman in an unhappy marriage.  After learning her husband is having an affair with the au pair,  she fights a sense of hopelessness and despair by trying to have fun and by becoming involved with men  who she happens on.  She brings a street person to her house, enters into a reckless relationship with a  student activist and commissions a parking lot attendant to paint her in the nude.  Her husband has become infatuated by the au pair who wants to have her declared insane so she can move in on him.  She has to choose between staying to face their abuse or escaping to Seattle's Belltown district.

 

 

 

For more information contact :  Jorj@zipcon.net