Intimacy and Other Plays

Thomas Bradshaw

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781559364690
• eBook ISBN: 9781559367837
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

"Bradshaw has proved in play after play that he has a confident vision of the theater that is his own. The politically incorrect plots jump merrily from one outrage to another, never pausing to explain motivation or linger on subtext. His dramas ask: What would happen if every dark urge, lingering resentment and unedited ugly insult that popped into your head came spilling out of your mouth? . . . No playwright applies as ruthlessly Hitchcock's definition of drama as 'life with the boring parts taken out.'"—The New York Times

Interracial couple Jerry and Pat borrow tools from their recently widowed, white evangelical neighbor James, and they even share the same Latino contractor, the mysterious Fred. Everything's suburban bliss until James, after discovering his neighbors' daughter Janet is a budding porn star, shuns the family. But what James doesn't know is that his aspiring-filmmaker son Matthew has other ideas...

An outrageous and revealing comedy about race, sex, and familiarity, Intimacy, the newest work by playwright Thomas Bradshaw, premiered Off-Broadway with The New Group in winter 2014. This collection from the fiercely provocative and funny playwright also includes Dawn, Fulfillment, Southern Promises, Job, Strom Thurmond Is Not a Racist, Lecture on the Blues and Purity.

Thomas Bradshaw's other plays include The Bereaved, declared a New York Times Critic's Pick and one of the Best Plays of 2009 by Time Out New York; Mary; and Burning. He was hailed as the Best Provocative Playwright of 2007 by the Village Voice.

INTIMACYINTIMACY

PRODUCTION HISTORY

The world premiere of Intimacy was produced by the New Group (Scott Elliott, Artistic Director; Adam Bernstein, Executive Director) at the Acorn Theater in New York on January 29, 2014, with support from the MAP Fund (a program of Creative Capital, primarily supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Venturous Theater Fund and The Lark Play Development Center. The production was directed by Scott Elliott; set design was by Derek McLane, costume design was by Scott Elliott, lighting design was by Russell H. Champa, video design was by Olivia Sebestky, sound design was by Shane Rettig; the production stage manager was Valerie A. Peterson. The cast was:

JERRY	Keith Randolph Smith
PAT	Laura Esterman
JANET	Ella Dershowitz
JAMES	Daniel Gerroll
MATTHEW	Austin Cauldwell
FRED	David Anzuelo
SARAH	Déa Julien

CHARACTERS

JERRY, black, forty to sixty

PAT, Jerry’s wife, white, fifty to seventy

JANET, Jerry and Pat’s daughter, biracial but looks absolutely white, eighteen

JAMES, lives next door to Pat and Jerry, white, forty to sixty

MATTHEW, James’s son, white, eighteen

FRED, a contractor, Hispanic, forty to sixty

SARAH, Fred’s daughter, Hispanic, seventeen

SETTING

A wealthy suburb. The present.

PROLOGUE

MATTHEW: My mother died a couple of years ago. It was terrible. The most terrible part was seeing how it affected my father. He loved her so much. So did I, of course, but his whole reality crumbled. I really couldn’t focus much on grieving for my mother ’cause I was so worried that he was going to commit suicide. Every night I would have horrifying dreams about finding my dad dead when I woke up in the morning. You know, walking down the stairs to find him hanging in the living room, or walking into the bathroom to find him in the bathtub with his wrists slit.

(Pause.)

My dad worked on Wall Street in “Financial Services.” I don’t really know what that means. I asked him a bunch of times, and his answers never really provided any clarity for me about his job. I do know this—my dad made a lot of money. After my mother died he just quit his job. Just left. I was like, “Dad, you can’t quit your job!” And he said, “We don’t really need the money. We haven’t needed the money for a while now.” I don’t think that we’re super rich, but who knows. My dad is very, very frugal, so you can’t get a sense of how much money we have by his spending habits. He always tips exactly twelve percent, which is so embarrassing. And every week he diligently takes our cans and plastic bottles to the recycling center so he can get the $3.80 or whatever it is.

(Pause.)

My mother always wanted me to be an artist. She had me start taking violin lessons at three years old, and I started playing the piano when I was five. I continued taking piano lessons until she died. It was then that I realized that I didn’t have a passion for music. I love film. I love great films. I love the work of Jonas Mekas, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, Lars von Trier and Rainer Fassbinder. This is what I want to do with my life. Films make people forget themselves and transport them to a magical place. A place where they can toss off the dreariness and ordinariness of everyday life. Being a filmmaker means providing people with the catalyst to live out their greatest and deepest fantasies. Film is better than any drug in the world.

(Pause.)

I want to create something to commemorate my mother’s memory. The worst thing about her dying, for me, was that I never got to say good-bye. When someone is sick for a long time, and you know that they’re going to die, you have time to reconcile yourself to this fact. It makes it easier, I think. My mother just walked out the door one morning, and never came home. She once said to me, “Follow your heart, Matthew. Follow your heart, and you will always be happy.”

I’m going...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Playwright’s Note
• Fulfillment
• Intimacy
• Lecture on the Blues
• Job
• Southern Promises
• Dawn
• Purity
• Strom Thurmond is not A Racist
• About the Author