Wright-off Stage
Dana Lynn Formby is an Ohio University resident playwright. “Armed With Peanut Butter” is her nationally award-winning play that will be performed in the Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in April. This script is based on her interview with Backdrop.
Cast of Characters:
Dana Lynn Formby…………..(graduate playwright)
Backdrop Writer………………..(student journalist)
Barista………………………………..(student working her way through college)
Mom…………………………………..(Character manifestation through Dana’s voice)
Dad…………………………………….(Character manifestation through Dana’s voice)
ACT I
Scene I- Caramel
(Lights rise on a glowing atmosphere inside Donkey Coffee & Espresso. Enter Formby through the swinging entrance door as she escapes the blistering, cold sleet outside. She weaves her way to the barista and orders.)
Formby: (Smiling politely.) Caramel macchiato please.
Barista: (Leaning toward Formby in a whisper.) To be honest, I have always thought that drink sucks. You want something with caramel? (Pause.) I’ll get you a caramel latte. It has two shots of espresso, so you’ll get your caffeine fix.
Formby: Sweet. Anything warm will work after walking through that fucking sleet storm.
Scene II- The Interview
(Formby takes her drink while scanning the sparsely populated room when she eyes a worn, red armchair beneath “Donkey” on the iced over front window. Situating herself on the edge of the chair, she eagerly leans forward hands cupped while resting her elbows on her knees for the duration of the scene.)
Backdrop Writer: Dana?
(He extends his right hand to which Formby greets with both hands firmly grasping his one. Not a typical handshake.)
Formby: Your hands are still frozen too.
Backdrop Writer: Yeah, it sucks out there. But, let me just start off by saying I read “Armed with Peanut Butter” in my Dramatic Analysis class, and it was absolutely amazing!
Formby: (Her grin returns with a humbled reaction this time.) Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Backdrop Writer: Well if you don’t mind, we’ll go ahead and get started.
(He pulls out a grey recorder and small, red notebook from his leather messenger bag.)
Formby: (She revisits her mochita and takes a sip in preparation for extensive discussion.) Sure thing.
(Cups clang in the background and snippets of nearby conversations can be overheard throughout the conversation.)
Backdrop Writer: How long have you been a playwright?
Formby: Let’s see, probably a total of…(Wheels turn in her head as she subtracts and adds years. Pauses between words.) This is my fifth year…so I started when I was like twenty…I’m 32 now, so when I was 27.
Backdrop Writer: How would you define your profession as a playwright?
Formby: In my heart, I believe that all human-beings have wonderful, deep thoughts. I think it’s really part of being human, finding the meaning in things and constructing them. We do it on a regular basis. I believe a playwright takes these thoughts of what it is to be human then translates them into something tactile.
Backdrop Writer: What inspired you to become a playwright?
Formby: I was an actor. (She pauses and even through her glasses, eyes drift off into her past.)
I was 18 and enlisted in the Marine Corps to be like my father. But, I received an acting scholarship and ended up passing on the Marine Corps, which was pretty luckily. I mean I think about the direction my life has gone since that decision. It took me to the University of Wyoming where fell in love with a boy. We dropped out of school. and moved to Albuquerque where we opened our theater company, the Space Theater. During our seven years there, I learned A LOT about this passion inside me which is “the-A-ter.” (She mimics the stereotypical dramatist’s pronunciation.)
Backdrop Writer: Can you expand on those years?
Formby: Money was a real struggle, and I realized if I wanted to do anything further with this I needed a degree. It was just glaringly necessary that if I was going to have a life of art, I was going to need credentials to back myself up. So, we moved back up to Wyoming and finished our degrees. But when I got out, I was uncastable. Like seriously, I could not get a part to save my ass.
Backdrop Writer: (Scribbling away, he interrupts strategically so he finish transcribing.) So at this point you’re still an actor?
Formby: Yeah, still an actor.
(She refocuses and continues with the same enthusiastic pace.)
I read Celia Adler’s book, who was a pretty famous actress. She described the actor as a storyteller who is inspired by these “stories” happening all around us in everyday life. So, me being a good little student said, (She raises her voice into that of an painfully joyful elementary-aged girl.) “There’s stories happening all around me! But, where are these stories?!”
Backdrop Writer: Did you find those stories?
Formby: I vividly remember the windstorm that appeared out of nowhere when I was car shopping with my cousin. We could see the clear line of smooth air. It wasn’t dangerous but more like a dust-devil. So, I put myself in my mind’s eye and told myself, “There’s a story being told in here.” And, my first play I wrote about this.
It was about a flower who the wind comes in and busts in half, a seed who the wind plants, and a leaf who thinks his is going to get out of the riggermoral of life but lands in the gutters. Those ideas became the characters of these car salesmen in a bar whose worlds are turned upsidedown by a woman who enters the bar.
Then I fell in love with it, writing.
Backdrop Writer: So how big was that play in respect to your career?
Formby: That play got me to the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive which was pretty damn sweet. This program commissioned my undergraduate where I wrote a full-length that made it to Regionals.
It was those two pieces of work are what got me into this program here at OU.
Backdrop Writer: (Fears his recorder is not picking up her quotes due to the increasing noisy crowd that has since filled the coffee shop.) I’m going to stop you right there for just a second. I want to make sure I can hear you on this.
Formby: That’s okay. That’s okay.
ACT II
Scene I- Full-length
(He stops the recording and hits the play button to which he sighs in relief because he can hear Formby’s voice on the tape. She smiles acknowledging she hears herself as well.)
Backdrop Writer: Sorry about that. Okay, so we were at your full-length…
Formby: (Her eyes look to the top rim of her glasses as she begins to build her enthusiastic momentum again.) The story focuses on these two 17-or 18 -year-old kids stuck in a park, and one of them is drafted for Vietnam. Overall, it delves into the idea that the social class in which we live subjects us to the choices we make. It limits the possibilities of where we can go in life.
There was just one thing about this whole piece that terrified me.
I was terrified to tell my father, Jimmy D. Formby, that I was writing about Vietnam because we were not allowed to speak of “Vietnam” in our house. It was a cuss word pretty much. We could use a lot of other cuss words, but not “Vietnam.” I didn’t tell him about my play forever because I was scared of what would happen.
Finally, we were like a week before opening….
Scene II- The Conversation
(Formby regresses back to that time in her life and vocalizes her parents’ portions of dialogue from that conversation. Scene dims, and spotlight shines down, focusing all attention to her. It is like her soliliquy.)
Mom: Dana, you have to tell Dad your play is about the war. Otherwise, he is just going to show up and then be taken by surprise. I know that’s not what you want, and this is may seem difficult for you. There’s no avoiding it now, but it will all work out. I promise.
Formby: So, I sat down with my dad…
Dad: Nervous for tonight?
Younger Formby: Yeah, kinda. Nothing new really. You know me, justing sitting in the back row nervously fidgeting the whole time. It’s not the writing that gets me, it’s the audience’s response. You never know how people are going to react. I don’t know…
Dad: (Jokingly with a manly chuckle.) Well, if anyone has a problem with MY kid’s play, they’re going to have to deal with me!
Younger Formby: (Smiling.)Thanks dad. Um, dad…I need to talk to you about my play. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do…just…
Dad: What is it kiddo?
Formby: …and explained to him what exactly it as I was writing about.
Dad: Okay. Alright…I’ll see you tonight.
Formby: He came and he watched it.
A week past after he saw it, when I went to go visit him.
He was expecting me. When I opened the door, there he was with a decent sized, older book. We sat down on his couch, and he opened it to a page covered with pictures. It was the photo-album scrapbook he had made from his time in Vietnam.
Dad: (In a very serious, soft voice.) I don’t have the power to tell my stories. So will you please tell them?
Formby: We then sat down together, and he told me a lot of the trials and tribulations he went through during that time in his life. Something he had never shared with anyone before.
Scene III- Trophy
(Lights brighten and the scene returns to the table and chairs of Donkey.)
Backdrop Writer: Wow.
Formby: (She laughs.) Yeah, that was my reaction too.
Backdrop Writer: Regarding that play, “Armed with Peanut Butter,” you won an award right? What did that feel like to win?
Formby: That’s a difficult thing to deal with, in my opinion. A lot of times award-winning artists are perceived in this country as a winner, or the best. Art is not that. It is not about winning or being the best. In reality, a play wins because it is great. It’s about human-beings wrestling with the struggles that we have in life. No one can say one piece of art is the best, it’s just not like that.
Backdrop Writer: So then what would you say is the most rewarding or has the most meaning to you in regards to your accomplishments, if not the actual awards?
Formby: My dad giving me that book.
Backdrop Writer: Clearly, you have a gift for stroytelling. How do you do it? What inspires you?
Formby: Inspiration is such a difficult thing to pin down with a definition. I have to say that when I pick up my computer to start structuring words, I look to anything I have come in contact with that hits me in my heart as something I need to tell a story about.
Backdrop Writer: That’s all I have, unless you can think of anything else?
Formby: Nope. That’s about it. Actually this works out perfectly because I have a meeting for my current play, it’s pretty intense. (She laughs.)
(Both rise from their chairs and gather their belongings, but not without once last handshake. Again, both hands.)
Backdrop Writer: (Smiling.) Thanks again for sharing a little about yourself. Good luck with the new play! Maybe we’ll have a follow-up interview for it.
Formby: Sure thing! That would be fantabulous! Have a good night.
(Lights dim and curtains close on Donkey, the writer and Formby.)
Formby’s story doesn’t end here. She is finishing her new play, “Corazon de Manzan,” which is slated to open at the SummerWorks festival in Toronto this August. Before then, she will travel to D.C. for the “Armed with Peanut Butter” performance, graduate from the M.F.A program and return home to her husband in Chicago. She is still very close with her father however far away she may be, but their bond is evident in her writing. This is what she lives for, “the-A-ter.”
Direct link: http://backdropmag.com/this-and-that/wright-off-stage/