About
the Play:
Banana Man is a one-act comedy by Don Nigro. "Buster
Keaton" and "Samuel Beckett" as imagined by Don
Nigro have a get-acquainted meeting in a restaurant to discuss
the movie they are both working on. A young waitress with theatrical
ambitions has no idea who either of them are.
Banana Man is a funny and moving play about the quiet,
absurd heroism of two apparently very different but very great
artists. In New York, in the summer of 1964, an aging Buster Keaton
appeared in a short experimental film written by Samuel Beckett, the
one time they collaborated. In this play, set in an Italian
restaurant in Greenwich Village that summer, two gentlemen named
"Buster" and "Samuel" attempt to communicate with
each other, with the unlikely help of a chatty young waitress with
theatrical ambitions, who mistakes Buster for Moe from the Three
Stooges and Sam for his agent. (Cast: 1 woman, 2 men)
The collection Banana Man and Other Plays also includes
eight more short plays and monologues by Don Nigro. The plays
include:
Balloon Rat: Anna, a young German woman, tells us about the
mysterious events that took place in her old apartment in Munich,
where she lives with her little girl and a cat, when a large but
demonically clever rat seems to be moving around at night among the
blown up balloons left on the floor after her daughter's birthday
party. A funny and touching monologue about a compelling young woman
coming to terms with time and mortality. (Cast: 1 female)
Barefoot in Nightgown by Candlelight is a popular choice
for high school drama festivals. Cath is an orphan, sent to a girls'
boarding school in the country, a big old house where she is very
lonely until two of the other girls, Alicia and Belle, creep into her
room one night, blow on her face to awaken her, and initiate her into
a dangerous midnight game of Mistress and Slave. But over time the
dares gradually become more dangerous, more erotic, more cruel, more
sinister. An excellent Halloween play. First produced at Shadowbox
Cabaret in Columbus and by the Grey Wing Stage Company in New York.
(Cast: 3 female)
Great Slave Lake: Two women, Gretchen and Margaret, sit on
their next door front porches in a small Ohio town in the autumn of
1938 and talk about their husbands, both named Clyde, each a brother
of the other woman, who have mysteriously disappeared on a fishing
trip to Canada a few months earlier. Mysterious, complex,
frightening, and funny. (Cast: 2 female, 2 male)
Ida Lupino in the Dark: A sofa in a darkened room. In this
very funny ten minute play, Minnie sits in a darkened room, her face
illuminated by the eerie glow of snow on an unseen downstage
television set, surrounded by junk assembled by her philandering
artist husband, creating in her head a bizarre imaginary film.
Minnie's sisters, Sherry and Caitlin, attempting to understand the
reasons for Minnie's apparent nervous breakdown, are pulled into her
demented old imaginary movie, and discover what finally pushed her
over the edge. A densely packed and funny ten minutes or so of
nostalgic movie lunacy and betrayal. Includes dramaturgical note.
(Cast: 3 female)
Mooncalf: Rebecca, a woman in her seventies, is writing a
letter to her son, Ben, although she speaks the letter to the
audience. She tells him the increasingly grotesque and horrible story
of the very cold night in which her cow gave birth to a calf, but
because her husband Clarence says he won't go out in the cold for a
cow, the calf freezes to death, and they are forced to engage in
increasingly unhappy efforts to get the weak cow back into the barn.
But the cow keeps staggering back out to be with the frozen calf,
until Clarence, in a rage, goes out to shoot it. But the silver
lining, says Rebecca, is that now we got all the hamburger we can
eat. A complex, funny and horrifying little tale that might explain
why Ben never writes back. (Cast: 1 female)
Narragansett: In the year 1874, Ada looks over the rail of
a boat in Narragansett Bay and tries to make sense of her life,
obsessively returning in her mind to her experiences twenty years
earlier, when she was governess for the children of Nathaniel
Hawthorne on a trip to Italy. Memories of her love for their
beautiful but doomed daughter Una, their demonic son Julian, and of a
monstrous hairy creature like a huge badger that keeps crawling in
her window at night, mix with eerie recollections of the ruins of
Rome as she attempts to prepare herself for the cold water beneath
her. A haunting monologue about the sadness of time, the mixed joy
and horror of desire and memory, and the relationship of love to
death. A powerful piece for a skilled actress. (Cast: 1 female)
The Tale of the Johnson Boys:
In this powerful one act, two boys, John and Henry Johnson, tell the
true story of their capture by Indians near the Ohio River in the
late 1790s, and the bloody and terrible events that resulted. It is
the defining experience of their lives, and the play is a haunting
and complex allegory of violence, compassion, and ambiguous betrayal.
First produced in New York by the Grey Wing Stage Company. (Cast: 2
male)
Wild Turkeys: In this short,
powerful, poetic monologue, Miranda, age 16, tells of being both
fascinated and horrified by the grotesque wild turkeys that have been
coming down from the woods on foggy mornings. She has a terrible
premonition that they are messengers of death who've come to take the
child that is growing inside her. But this terrifying vision is what
helps her decide if she wants to keep her child. (Cast: 1 female)
About the Playwright:
Don Nigro is a prolific American playwright with over 400
works touching on a wide variety of themes including murder mysteries
(the Inspector
Ruffing series), American history (the Pendragon County
plays), Russian life and culture, art and artists, and more. His work
has been produced around the world and translated into ten languages.
He has twice been a finalist for the National Repertory Theatre
Foundation's National Play Award, and has won a Playwriting
Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as
grants from the Ohio Arts Council.