The Play about My Dad

Boo Killebrew

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786825438
• eBook ISBN: 9781786825445
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

"Dad. Could you start?But, you know, like it's you, just talking?" It's not easy putting on a play. It's even harder when your dad is the lead character, he's playing himself, and even though you're the professional playwright and he's the emergency surgeon, he keeps trying to rewrite your script. After Hurricane Katrina swept through her home town, Boo was determined to write a play about it. But she never imagined it would be this hard…

Act One

SCENE ONE

Lights up on a messy stage: there are piles of plywood and chairs. Things that the actors will use to tell the story. BOO KILLEBREW enters and turns on the lights. She looks around the stage. As she exits, she cues LARRY KILLEBREW to enter. LARRY walks on stage. He has not done this before.

LARRY: Hello. I am a doctor. My name is Larry Hammond Killebrew and I was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. I now live in Long Beach, Mississippi. I had to relocate to Long Beach after my home in Pass Christian was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. That is what I am doing here. On stage. I am going to tell my story about Katrina. (Beat.) My daughter is a playwright.

Pause.

LARRY: Now?

BOO: Yes.

LARRY: Okay, now, we’ll start the play. That was my intro and now we’ll start the script. Her words.

BOO: Well, I’m trying to make them yours.

LARRY: But they’re yours.

BOO: Well…

LARRY: Essentially, when you get down to it, they are yours.

BOO: I don’t know. They’re ours.

LARRY: But you wrote it.

BOO: Based on things you told me. So, they’re ours in a way.

Pause.

BOO: Dad. Could you start? But, you know, like it’s you, just talking?

LARRY: Acting.

BOO: Yes, but you know, you’re you.

LARRY: Yes, but I’m acting like me.

BOO: Well, sort of. But you don’t have to, you know, act.

LARRY: But, I am. Right?

BOO: Yes, but not really. (Beat.) Just go. I think you can just… start.

LARRY: Start now?

BOO: Yes, go for it.

She begins to walk away.

LARRY: What are you doing?

BOO: I’m gonna start setting up the space. For our play. You can start. I’ll be back here. Dad?

LARRY: What?

BOO: Go ahead.

LARRY: Oh. Okay. I am going to tell my story about Katrina. (Beat.) My daughter used to ask me if I ever thought about writing. She always believed that I could probably have been a really good writer. I told her I had thought about it. That if I wrote something it would, in fact, be a play and that it would be about doctors.

I don’t know if I told her I would write a play to make her even more curious (she loves plays, so I knew if I said I wanted to write a play she would be really curious, more curious than if I wanted to write a short story — she loves short stories too just not as much as plays — so I said “play”. I know what I’m doing). I told her it would be a play about doctors and now, fifteen years later, I am writing a play, with my daughter! About doctors! Well, not about doctors, but about Katrina! And me! I am writing this story with my daughter. Well, she’s writing it and I’m telling it…that is how we work.

BOO: (As she is setting up the stage, to her father.) We are going to play with magical realism and time travel and side stories and make the whole thing sort of like a tapestry.

LARRY: I have sewn a human’s body back together after it had been hit by a train. I have used a Black & Decker drill to remove a screw that was deeply embedded in a child’s foot in a hut in Honduras. I have surgically removed balloons filled with crack cocaine from a large man’s rectum. I didn’t think I was a man that did something called magical realism. But, the more we talked about these stories and after I went to the Wikipedia homepage for magical realism, the more I thought, “Yeah. Magical realism could work.” Boo and I were on the phone talking about initial ideas and “the world of the play”. I was thrown off by a few of her suggestions, but I don’t know…a lot of them sounded pretty neat. I told her:

BOO and LARRY begin a staged phone conversation. BOO nods a...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two