Hubris! Babbling in Babylon! Lies, rumors, cockroaches as a consolation, stealing in through your own window because the landlord has barred the door. Scripts that yellow
in producers’ files until they are rewritten for a television series. Hubris, you say hubris? It is one thing not to get paid, not to have a grant, to lose one’s own hard-earned office-
worker paycheck to finance “The Sonnets of Shakespeare” rather than adorning one’s body and home and line one’s stomach and pocket -- and it is quite another to survive at
the mercy of quaint curiosity. Oh, we wanted to revitalize the blood of the theater and instead have to clean rat-infested apartments to save other artists’ lives and God’s muse. I’
ve built stages upon which I’ve been denied the use. I don’t understand how it happens -- one actor slashes himself onstage, another urinates on the radiators offstage, yet
another defecates himself and the audience screams and tears the lighting off the grid, usually-Christian-Episcopal parishioners throw bricks and scream obscenities,
underground”liberal” actors screech ethnic slurs, friends are lied to, actors quit on opening night, the stage catches fire, off-Off Broadway is a floor show in hell!
“Hubris”! -- you speak to me of “hubris”. Well, I am so tired of label-makers who can’t spell, slanderers who make up stories when the truth is more vivid and exciting,
foundations that are on top, publishers who are actually privashers, publishing private trash, theaters in lofts, basements,, garages, churches, brownstones, storefronts, halls,
gymnasiums, and their HUBRIS! Critics with their hubris, producers with their hubris, actors with their hubris, it amazes me that I’ve any hubris myself. Pearls before swine!
This is it -- there’s no bottom left to hit. Sin City. Icebergs and blacklists! How deep they run!!!
from Donald L. Brooks' play 'SHOWCASE"
in producers’ files until they are rewritten for a television series. Hubris, you say hubris? It is one thing not to get paid, not to have a grant, to lose one’s own hard-earned office-
worker paycheck to finance “The Sonnets of Shakespeare” rather than adorning one’s body and home and line one’s stomach and pocket -- and it is quite another to survive at
the mercy of quaint curiosity. Oh, we wanted to revitalize the blood of the theater and instead have to clean rat-infested apartments to save other artists’ lives and God’s muse. I’
ve built stages upon which I’ve been denied the use. I don’t understand how it happens -- one actor slashes himself onstage, another urinates on the radiators offstage, yet
another defecates himself and the audience screams and tears the lighting off the grid, usually-Christian-Episcopal parishioners throw bricks and scream obscenities,
underground”liberal” actors screech ethnic slurs, friends are lied to, actors quit on opening night, the stage catches fire, off-Off Broadway is a floor show in hell!
“Hubris”! -- you speak to me of “hubris”. Well, I am so tired of label-makers who can’t spell, slanderers who make up stories when the truth is more vivid and exciting,
foundations that are on top, publishers who are actually privashers, publishing private trash, theaters in lofts, basements,, garages, churches, brownstones, storefronts, halls,
gymnasiums, and their HUBRIS! Critics with their hubris, producers with their hubris, actors with their hubris, it amazes me that I’ve any hubris myself. Pearls before swine!
This is it -- there’s no bottom left to hit. Sin City. Icebergs and blacklists! How deep they run!!!
from Donald L. Brooks' play 'SHOWCASE"
FOOTLIGHTS
A shadow duet for two actors
from Donald L. Brooks' play "SHOWCASE"
Trap door
in my nightmare
The scenery went up
and I went down
Blood in a comic operetta
A one-man show in a hippodrome
Lurking, lurking at the stage door
The understudy forgot his lines
Naked
In a costume drama
Villain
Of a buffonery
Footlights! Footlights! Footlights for theatricals!
There is a stark only face I control
I don't look to stage left, I don't look to stage right
Ahead, behind, above, below
There's no where to go
There's no where to go.
There is a dark, lonely place in the soul
You can look to stage left, you can look to stage right
Ahead, behind, above, below
There's no where to go
There's no where to go.
Footlights, footlights, footlights for theatricals!
Why
is the audience in the other room?
Why
are there no lines?
Othello
becomes
Macbeth
Why has this divertissement
turned into a burlesque
Mise en scene for murder
and everything is real.
Footlights, footlights, footlights for theatricals!
A shadow duet for two actors
from Donald L. Brooks' play "SHOWCASE"
Trap door
in my nightmare
The scenery went up
and I went down
Blood in a comic operetta
A one-man show in a hippodrome
Lurking, lurking at the stage door
The understudy forgot his lines
Naked
In a costume drama
Villain
Of a buffonery
Footlights! Footlights! Footlights for theatricals!
There is a stark only face I control
I don't look to stage left, I don't look to stage right
Ahead, behind, above, below
There's no where to go
There's no where to go.
There is a dark, lonely place in the soul
You can look to stage left, you can look to stage right
Ahead, behind, above, below
There's no where to go
There's no where to go.
Footlights, footlights, footlights for theatricals!
Why
is the audience in the other room?
Why
are there no lines?
Othello
becomes
Macbeth
Why has this divertissement
turned into a burlesque
Mise en scene for murder
and everything is real.
Footlights, footlights, footlights for theatricals!
| SHOWCASE by Donald L. Brooks, cast performing song "Showcase" at end of show, 1980. |
| SHOWCASE by Donald L. Brooks, set design by Jon Robin Dewey, 1980, the QEII passes the Hudson piers. |
