RoosevElvis

The Team

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781783198191
• eBook ISBN: 9781783198184
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

On a hallucinatory road trip from the Badland to Graceland, the spirits of Theodore Roosevelt and Elvis Presley battle over the soul of Ann, a painfully shy meat-processing plant worker. Set against the boundless blue skies of the Great Plains and endless American highway, RoosevElvis is a new work about gender, appetite, and the multitudes we contain.

The set is a combination of ANN’s apartment in Rapid City, and a film set.

As the audience enters, the two actresses are lounging on the couch watching THELMA & LOUISE on ANN’s television.

At top of show, they migrate to center stage, already in full drag. They sit and address the audience. Both competitive and warm.

TEDDY: I was born in 1858.

ELVIS: I died in 1977.

TEDDY: My father’s name was also Theodore.

ELVIS: My mama’s name was Gladys. I liked to call her Little Baby.

TEDDY: I called my little sister Corrine “Pussy.”

ELVIS: (Laughs.) Oh man. That reminds me out in Beverly Hills, we had a pool, we had a cabana and I installed a two-way mirror so I could watch the girls change into their bikinis.

Beat.

TEDDY: I had two sisters and a brother.

ELVIS: I was an only child.

TEDDY: My mother was from Georgia.

ELVIS: Actually I was supposed to have a twin brother, but he died at birth.

TEDDY: My first wife, Alice, died in childbirth.
I remarried 2 years later.
I was born in New York, New York.

ELVIS: I moved to Memphis when I was 14.

TEDDY: I went to Harvard when I was 17.

ELVIS: I graduated high school. I got a job driving a truck.
I was training to become an electrician.

TEDDY: I ran for New York State Assembly and I got it. I was only 23.

ELVIS: I was 19 the first time they played me on the radio. Man, nobody knew what the hell I was, you know? Folks were calling in going, “Who’s that? Who’s that?” So Dewey Phillips gets me to come down to the station for an interview, and the very first question he asked me was what high school did I go to.

Cuz, he wanted folks listening to know I was a white guy. I mean, I was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. I really shook things up, man. (Beat.) I never wrote any songs that I sung.

TEDDY: I wrote 45 books! Not including journals published posthumously. I wrote in my journal nearly every day, editing as I went. I was also a voracious reader. I read tens of thousands of books, sometimes three in a day. I can have a conversation with anyone about anything. I am a part of everything I ever read.

ELVIS: If I hadn’t been an entertainer I would have liked to been sheriff.

TEDDY: If I hadn’t been the President of the United States,
I would have gone into natural sciences. I love animals. I love to dissect things and categorize them. When I was President the White House was full of pets.

ELVIS: I had a chimpanzee named Scatter. He knew how to drive!

TEDDY: I had a horse named Manitou.

ELVIS: I had a horse named Bear.
I love Christmas and lasagna and meat.

TEDDY: I love my family, the fourth of July, meat, and guns.

ELVIS: I like to carry a gun.

TEDDY: Me too. Very much. I have many guns.

ELVIS: I liked to carry a gun right here. (Points to sternum.)

TEDDY: I shot thousands of animals. My first present to Alice was a lynx pelt rug.

ELVIS: I can’t remember the first gift I gave Pricilla but I’m sure it had diamonds in it. I bought thousands of Cadillacs, and I’m real into karate.

TEDDY: I believe in exercise. Good masculine pursuits. Build up the body and the mind will follow, that sort of thing. My father taught me that. And you know, Henry Adams once said of me that I was pure act! He was terrified of me. (Beat.) My father was the best man I ever knew.

A quiet moment.

ELVIS: I really like you man.

TEDDY: (Looks at him.) Well that’s a lovely thing to hear.

ELVIS: I mean it.

Silence.

TEDDY: (Turning chair to him.) Let’s be honest one to the other. You don’t really know me.

ELVIS: Sure I do.

TEDDY: (As if talking to a child.) We’ve spent the last three days together. You only know what I have presented to you in those three days. If you like me, you are either the type of person who generally likes people, or you are far too trusting of first impressions.

ELVIS: I liked you before. I read about you.

TEDDY leans back in chair giving him a dubious look.

Why’d you gotta say that, Teddy? Why can’t you just take a compliment?

Pause as TEDDY decides whether to be genuine. He decides to be.

TEDDY: Because I think you’re worthwhile Elvees.

ELVIS: (Mimicking his voice.) Well I guess you only know what you know about me in the last three days or however you said it or however you just put it, which kind of hurt my feelings.

TEDDY: (Laughing at him.) You’re a pretty easy read Elvees.

ELVIS gives the audience a sly look, like “That’s what he thinks.”

ELVIS: You know, I had a thing you said up on the wall of my office. Before I even knew you, like I know you now.

TEDDY: Curious. I would not have expected that.

ELVIS: I liked to read it every day before I sat at my desk. Sometimes I’d read it out loud even though nobody was there. I kinda felt like I was talking to you when I was doing that. Like I would look in the mirror, and I’d talk to you. Like my own version of you. ’Cause in my version, you were taller.

TEDDY stands and assumes a more noble position.

You were bigger boned. “It is not the critic who counts.” (TEDDY makes a sound of recognition and approval.) “Not the man who points out how the s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Cast of Characters
• A note from one of the writers
• A note on inspirational materials
• A note on the performances
• Act One