See Bob Run & Wild Abandon

Daniel MacIvor

• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780887549991
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Drama
• Index: Literature

Bob is on the road. Bob is on the run. But from what, or whom, is she running? Follow Bob as she hops from car to car telling her story to unsuspecting drivers as she tries to put her life in the rear-view mirror. Will she make it to her destination? And what will she find when she gets there? Find out in the critically adored See Bob Run."...the ironic name stands in sharp contrast to this perceptive and thoroughly engrossing one-woman show." — Toronto Star In Wild Abandon we are introduced to Steve, a man alone in the world. Steve is acerbic, opinionated, and desperate to figure himself out. As he recounts his life story, we follow Steve out the door of his strict Catholic home, through diners and bars and parks as we hear the tales that made the man. Wild Abandon is a story about running away, and about how to find your way home again."...a one-man show without valleys. It's a wonderful piece—honest, imaginative, profound, moving and very funny." —Carole Corbeil

Wild Abandon

A Study of Steve

For V.S.

Wild Abandon was first produced in 1988 by Sword Theatre in association with Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto.

STEVE: Daniel MacIvor

Directed by Vinetta Strombergs

Designed by Stephan Droege

Slides by Steve Mici Lucas

Stage managed by Chris Humphrey

Original music by Zang Tumb Tumb

The Set

For the Toronto production the set was a black box. The props were a wooden chair, a chain, a white birdcage, and an oversized egg. The back wall was a scrim on which the words and images were projected. While other options are possible, STEVE is a low-tech character most comfortable in low-tech surroundings.

The Images

Slides should be kept to a minimum. Photographic images should be black and white and text should be white typewritten words on a black background. Unless otherwise noted, slide images come up, wait a beat, then black out.

A chair sits centre stage. Lights up on STEVE standing behind the scrim.

STEVE

(voice over) “Come into my parlour,” said the poet to the chair.

“Can’t you see that I’m so lonely and have no one to care? My clothes are all torn and smelling of an unrequited love.”

The poet slumped, he rubbed his eyes, he asked the one above:

“Tell the chair to come in here and keep me from myself! My soul has been alone too long upon that dusty shelf.”

The chair sat in silence.

The poet was inspired.

Black. Lights up on STEVE stage left.

One time? I was a little kid like nine—this woman? We were out in some stupid family rest-o-rant and everybody’s fighting in low voices and complaining about the food and that, and this woman, sitting over across at another table, she keeps looking at me, staring at me. I don’t say nothing and I start thinking: she’s really staring okay! And I start thinking “Hey! This woman, she’s my real mother right. She followed me here. She’s been watching me for weeks and she’s my real mother and she’s gonna come over and say ‘This boy is my son’ and take me away from my stupid ugly family who won’t let me do nothing and never let me talk and never let me listen and won’t let me have a black room. She’d take me away and out into her new car—that smells new and—a convertible and—with the roof down and we’d drive far away to this house—this castle she lives in and I’d live there too and I’d have my own huge fucking room”…

So I’m thinking this and the woman, she gets up and starts walking over to me. I’m thinking: “HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! It really IS my mother!” I got so nervous. She comes right up to me. Standing right there. I’m sitting down okay, she’s right there, and she reaches back… and jabs this fork into my stomach and starts screaming:

DEVIL’S EYES DEVIL’S EYES DEVIL’S EYES!

Pause.

The place went nuts. They had to take me to the hospital… took her away to some rubber room someplace…

Yeah.

That was pretty much the highlight of my life. That and the time Alphonse McKeigan killed the duck in Wentworth Park.

Pause. Sound is of people learning dance steps. Image is of “Dancing.” Light on STEVE, down centre, wrapped in chains.

There are all different kinds of dancing.

Oh yeah. Tons. Well, four. Yeah. Four.

One. Stage dancing. The kind they do on stage. Ballet or modern or whatever. Chor-e-o-graphed. Someone tells the dancer who went to special schools for years and years where to move and what to feel and they do that. A bunch of people—the ODD-ience—watches. They love it or hate it or don’t give a shit. They clap… they applaud.

No matter what they feel, the people watching, they always applaud.

Two. Ballroom dancing. Like waltzing. Two people dance together, touching and that in a certain way. In ballroom dancing they say you don’t need an oddience but far as I can see you do. This oddience though they almost never applaud. Except in movies.

Three. Social dancing. This happens at parties sometimes, at wedding receptions and clubs and bars. In this kind there’s also couples and it’s social because it’s not planned out or anything. For fun. Mostly for fun, and for mating purposes. You know, sex.

There’s about thirteen, fifteen ways to do this kind of dancing but there’s also all this subtle stuff that changes with each person. One time people did certain styles of social dancing. The Mashed Potato. The Cha Cha Cha. The Pony The Hustle The Stroll. Then all these got together with ballroom dancing and turned into disc-O-dancing but that does not exist on the planet anymore.

In social dancing the movements of the dancers is usually pretty uptight because of an unhappy childhood or a very heavy neurosis about death or whatever. Sometimes the movements are free and that but this only happens when the brain gets taken over by some chemical like booze or drugs.

And people watch. But no way, no way do they applaud.

Then there is the best kind of dancing.

Four. This kind doesn’t have a name. I could make one up. But I won’t. This kind there’s no oddience, no steps, no anything, just you. It can happen anytime, anywhere. And the most beautiful… the best music eve...