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| SETTING THE STAGE |
| Jacob McArthur Mooney |
| *A Showcase Of 21st Century Drama* |
| by |
| February's Feature Presentaion: |
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| 1. Jacob McArthur Mooney is the product of the public school system of Nova Scotia, Canada and the state college of Newfoundland, Canada. an honest face. developing a taste for this place, and thinks you should too. though of Irish descent, is finding himself described as 'some young Turk'. into self-pimpery, and would like to have any interest in seeing the rest of the play sent to his address at jacob709_902@hotmail.com . |
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| *Click title to read play |
| Author's Introduction to "doing something" A drama in two acts by Jacob McArthur Mooney. Joseph 'Josh" MacElroy is going nowhere. He is 20 years old, he is too skinny and he drinks too much. His only companion is Mona, a woman in her sixties. Mona and Joseph fight, drink together, cry on each other's shoulder, and generally serve to fill the void in the each other's life as one waits to die and the other waits until he is forced to started living. Their's is a friendship based on need, on convenience, they are each other's only link to a time when they were both happy. Mona and Joseph used to be neighbours in a small town outside of the city where Mona happily served as housewife to her cheating husband Carl. Joseph grew up under the guise of his tireless doctor mother, Rachel, and his artist father, Jack, who died when Joseph was a teenager. But his strongest ally may have been his first and only love, Karen, who helped Joseph see past himself and let him teach her about the world outside her little town. We see Karen's transformation over a period of five years from the playful, precocious adolescent to the sad and bitter young woman who must decide between chasing the world beyond her window or sticking with the increasingly impossible young man to whom she owes the passion for this world and with whom she has shared so much. Joseph is forced to re evaluate his life and the choices he has made with it upon the death of his mother. "doing something" is the story of the three days between Rachel's death and funeral. Through use of flashbacks it also becomes the story of Joseph's loving yet distant relationship with his mother, Rachel and Mona's ongoing competition for the love and attention of Joseph, Karen's ongoing "personal revolution", Mona's own marital indiscretions , and Joseph's gradual descent from promising young man to the emotional basket case that opens the play. This all comes to a head with a liquor soaked scene between Mona and Joseph, played out in a funeral parlour, and the play reaches a surprising climax when Joseph has to, literally, look his future self in the eye and do the right thing. At it's core, "doing something" is a play about responsibility and rebellion, it's about that moment that forces us to grow up once and for all, to stop talking about the future and to, quite literally, do something. It is not as much a story about hopelessness as it is about control, and realizing that no matter what has happened to us in the past, we always have control over our decisions, because our lives are always our own. Mixing in elements of black comedy and high drama, "doing something" is a play with many faces. After being given a well received reading at the Chester Playhouse in Chester, Nova Scotia, at the end of the summer of 2002 (where it opened the annual "New Plays" reading schedule in the beautiful Ondaatje Room), "doing something" was expanded to full length status. Now this play is ready for an audience, and promises to be a crowd pleaser wherever it goes. The author would like to thank Brian Fugett for his interest in presenting two scenes from "doing something" for the 'Zygote in my Coffee' audience, scene 1 featuring Joseph and Mona, and scene 6 featuring Joseph, Mona, and Karen, which is a flashback set two years prior to the opening scene. Cheers, Jacob McArthur Mooney |
| 2. "doing something" is celebrating its fifth anniversary as a work in progress. embarrassed by its roots as a melodrama. 69,781 characters long. not related to Jake by blood, but you know what they so about old married couples... an abstract concept in need of a physical incarnation. |
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| ©Brian Fugett |
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| "doing something" CAST of Characters |