One fine afternoon found me munching popcorn while watching TV news coverage of smart bombs raining down on Baghdad.

 

This moment was the prompt that led to a play script. Curio, as I came to title it, is a noir comedy that focuses a slightly absurdist lens on the commodification and consumption of the third-world by those of us lucky enough to have been born into privilege.

 

Lila and Emerson are a pair of confections, pertly ensconced in their fashionable townhome in the Nation’s Capital. They are dilettantes, dabblers in art and consumers of the decadent and questionably legal. They are in the slightest bit of danger though. It has come to light that Lila’s paramour; a Trump-esque character named Edgar has gifted them a large and mysterious box. It has been Edgar’s habit to give the pair gifts that are actually thefts from various ravaged and devastated corners of the globe… and these “gifts” are often alive. The mysterious box is pried open and, amidst dirty straw and rags, a wild-eyed and very exotic little man named Janus leaps out raving and exclaiming in an unfamiliar tongue.

 

Adding to the farce is Kathy, Emerson’s intern and lover. An Eastern European personal chef named Bela (who was spirited away from that war-torn region as one of Edgar’s gifts).  Edgar’s trophy-wife, a still-ripe but highly processed dragon-lady named Rose.  And Cian, a young vagabond just trying to get as far from the troubles of his native Belfast as he can… Unfortunately for him, he is tempted into this funhouse by Kathy’s restless appetite.

 

Curio was originally developed/workshopped by the Glad Fools theatre company and saw its first public showing on the stage of the Cricket Lounge, a gentleman’s club in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s Chris Rawson called it “Sardonic” and “Titillating”. Since that presentation I have reworked and expanded the play, most notably through presentations at the MadLab Theatre of Columbus and the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival new play program. In 2010, Curio was a contestant for the KCACTF/David Mark Cohen playwriting award and received its first amateur mounting at the KCACTF Arkansas State Festival.

 

The production requirements are quite flexible and the play has been mounted successfully with both a full-décor, conventional unit set design and a bare-bones minimalist approach. All that truly is needed scenically is that big, mysterious box. The remainder can be accomplished very well with costumes and props.