Playwrite Frank Gagliano

Bits And Pieces

Here are pieces ranging from “based-on-fact” incidents, to “silly” stuff, to dramatic sketches—and to “starts” that still have to develop.

The Warhol piece is based on a true incident. Pull/Push is silly. The Procession is my Existential take on the classic schtick, "who's-on-first." Hanna has been described by my good friend/colleague Brian Caudill as "Dr. Seuss meets Dr. Ruth." Sounds right to me.

Incident At The Grave Of Andy Warhol

Pull/Push

The Procession

Hanna: A Run-On Odyssey

(HANNA began as a run-on exercise I gave to a playwriting class.

To loosen them up.

You start with a phrase and start writing and you don’t think, plan, agonize or punctuate; you just write—let it stream. This was the starting phrase I used that day:

“ . . . so when hanna left the garage and went out to the pool she found that the pool wasn't there but the water was. . .”

I took the class exercise with the students.

I liked my wide-eyed, raunchy, Alice-In-Wonderland heroine and the pressure shifts of Hanna’s pressured odyssey, and I couldn’t stop until I had completed three parts, ending in a Romance—with a black crow.

At some point, the text was made into a theatre piece for narrator, performer, and percussion, by Jacques-Lecoq maven Sara Romersberger. We performed it at The New Dramatists, Primary Stages (in New York City) and at an American Contemporary Theatre Festival.

Be warned: Your on-line eyeballs may scramble a bit, riffing along with Hanna’s run-on odyssey. Could be fun, though. Or not.

FG)

Hanna (Part One): Hanna and the Horny Dwarfs

(Download PDF)

Hanna (Part Two): Hanna in Tinsel Town

(Download PDF)

Hanna (Part Three): Hanna and Harold (A love Story)

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