Run/Don't Run & Mission

Gary Duggan

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781783198139
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783198122
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

When was the last time you had a lucky streak?

Spanish Harlem, NYC, 1999 – A young man fleeing Dublin crash lands on the sofa of his Irish-American cousin, as this older cousin's relationship with his Dominican girlfriend is imploding. Over the summer they cling to the last vestiges of the dying club scene and flirt with smalltime criminality as storm clouds gather…

Part love triangle, crime thriller and immigrant story, Run / Don't Run is a provocative and accessible new play first performed by Bigger Picture Projects in February 2015.

This volume also includes a one-act companion play, Mission.

RUN / DON’T RUN

Characters

GENE MASSEY (35)

An Irish-American New Yorker.

PERDITA ALVAREZ (26)

Gene’s girlfriend, Dominican.

EOIN MASSEY (20)

Gene’s first cousin from Dublin.

The play takes place in New York City throughout the summer of 1999.

The set is the main living area of Perdita and Gene’s apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up on 1st Avenue in the East 110s in Spanish Harlem.

The apartment is pretty low-rent but relatively well looked after, neat enough and not too cluttered, with a few warm touches reflecting the dual heritages of its inhabitants.

The front door, leading to the corridor is on the back wall, and some of the corridor outside is visible when it is opened. On the right is a doorway with a bead curtain that leads into the kitchen and a short passage to the bedroom and bathroom.

Downstage left is a foldaway dining table with three chairs. Downstage right is a window that looks out onto 1st Avenue. In the centre of the room is a sofa, in front of this and to the right is an empty TV stand.

SCENE ONE

SUNDAY, 18 JULY 1999

GENE sits in a narrow pool of light, staring out.

GENE: This guy here is eyeballin’ me. What the fuck you lookin’ at? He got those yellow eyes ’bout to pop out the sockets and roll across the floor of this subway car. “What?”

Ducks his heads down behind his New York Post.

“JFK Jr’s plane still missing”. Disappeared into the ether. Two fucking days and no sign. One minute it’s there, the next it’s not. The fuckin’ curse of the Kennedys.

What a fuckin’ fuss everyone’s making of this rich kid and his little paper plane. Don’t think no one would give a flying fuck ’bout me if I disappeared off the face of the planet. If I was to vanish into thin fucking air, who would know?

Shit like that, that’d depress you sometimes, am I right?

My Pop got his head blown off too. Just like Junior’s here. Anybody give a shit about that? Anybody wanna spend 48 hours looking for my mortal remains? Naw, they’d leave me where I fell. Take no notice whatever, till I start to stink up the joint… Sad but true.

Seems to me that there’s certain people in life whose sole purpose is to be a fuck-up. Act as a warning to others: “Get your shit together or you’ll end up like that guy.” You know the ones I mean. Bums. Victims. Gimps on subway platforms, right? Doomed to failure, to wallow in shit, and make the majority go: “At least I ain’t fucked up as much as him. I must be doing something right.”

I been thinking recently that I could be one of those guys. A walking warning to everyone: “Do better.”

Great, I love to be an inspiration to others.

LIGHTS FADE.

SCENE TWO

SUNDAY, 18 JULY 1999

PERDITA stands by the sofa, staring at an empty space where the TV used to be.

PERDITA: What happened to the TV?

GENE: (From off-stage.) What?

PERDITA: Where’s the TV gone, Gene?

GENE comes out of the kitchen with two beers.

GENE: What TV?

PERDITA: My TV!

GENE: Our TV.

PERDITA: Where’s it fucking gone?

GENE: Someone must’ve stole it.

PERDITA: What?

GENE: (Giving her a beer.) Yeah, them crackheads people be lettin’ in.

PERDITA: Don’t bullshit me. What you do with it?

GENE: I sold it.

PERDITA: You what?

GENE: I said: I sold it.

PERDITA: Yeah, that’s what I thought you said. Why the fuck you do that?

GENE: We don’t need a TV. Nothin’ on unless you got cable.

PERDITA: We watch shit all the time!

GENE: Right, and it rots our minds. We don’t need a TV, baby.

PERDITA: Gene, you motherfucker, that was not your TV to sell. How I gonna see Law & Order now?

GENE: Fuck that shit.

PERDITA: No, fuck you. You gonna get that TV back.

GENE: Can’t. Spent the money already.

PERDITA: On what?

GENE: This guy in Jersey needed to unload a bunch of pills real quick. Sold them to me for like a third of street value.

PERDITA: How the fuck can you do this? What happened to you working construction again?

GENE: You know what happened with that.

PERDITA: Jesus, your back be right for like a year. You ain’t even attempted to get working again.

GENE: I will. I’m gonna.

PERDITA: When?

GENE: Soon.

PERDITA: I’m not standing by and watching you get in even deeper shit than last time.

GENE: Perdita, please…

PERDITA: You get caught again, you do jail time, I ain’t gonna wait around. Won’t do that.

GENE: I’m not going to fuck up again. I just got this one batch. I’ll move it all in a few days. A week, tops.

PERDITA: Right. You gonna get cocky in some club downtown, some security guy gonna see you sellin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Run / Don’t Run
• Mission