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(rehearsed reading), Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre, Classic Reading Series, 2004
(workshop) directed by Michael Butler, The Juilliard School, Third Year Project, 2003
An adaptation of four plays from the Wakefield Mystery Cycle: “Creation,” “Cain and Abel,” “Abraham and Isaac,” and “The Second Shepherd's Play.” Three doormen live in post-apocalyptic Manhattan, where they have been reduced to walking rich people's dogs. They dream that God creates the world, which is New York, and creates Adam and Eve. Eve is visited by Devil #1, who tempts her with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. She succeeds in tempting Adam, and God exiles them from Central Park. Cain runs a failing community garden on the Lower East Side. Abel, her younger brother, is everything that Cain is not: generous, devout, kind to animals, etc. The Angel comes down from Heaven to tell Cain to shape up, and Cain smacks him. Abraham owns a down-at-the-heels circus. God tells him to sacrifice Isaac at the site of the worst circus disaster in New York City, ten blocks away. The Angel stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac; then Isaac asks him if something very bad is about to happen. The Angel won't answer. The doormen wake up. A rogue doorman, Mak, steals their favorite dog. After the doormen save their dog, the Angel tells them that a baby girl born to save the world is in a burned out building in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and they brave the ice-covered East River to find her. The style is the Marx Brothers meet a Christmas pageant gone very, very bad.
Download a PDF sample scene.
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