My first play, Beaux Gestes & Beautiful Deeds, grew out of songs I’d begun writing about my fascinating bicultural family. I went on to write or co-write four more plays.
Home
› Page › Plays
Plays
07Jul
Mouse
©1990 Marie-Lynn Hammond
Mouse was commissioned about 1990 by Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary, along with several other short plays by other playwrights, for a 10-minute play festival. We were told that the plays would be performed as a lunch-time series, so topics that didn’t mix with lunch should be avoided; also, they would be staged with a minimum of props, lighting, etc. Other than that there were no restrictions on style or subject matter. I got the idea for this play after seeing a young street kid in the subway with a pet rat in the pocket of her jacket.
CHARACTERS
VINCE, a punk with green hair, Doc Marten boots, and a black leather jacket with chains. A young seventeen.
IDA, an office clerk in a beige raincoat with unfashionable glasses and no makeup. An old thirty-two.
PLACE
On a bus in a city.
TIME
The present.
07Jul
Beaux Gestes & Beautiful Deeds (excerpts)
©1984 Marie-Lynn Hammond
THE CHARACTERS
CORINNE, a Franco-Ontarian woman about 60
ELSIE, an English Canadian woman in her late 50s
MARIE-LYNN, their grand-daughter, mid 30s
THE SETTING
CORINNE is in her kitchen in Lowertown Ottawa; ELSIE is in the living room of her Montreal apartment. But while these spaces can be hinted at, the set shouldn’t attempt realism. It should be a relatively abstract space in which the three characters can move about freely.
THE TIME
For CORINNE and ELSIE, the spring of 1944 (except for the phone call section of the prologue which is a flash forward to about one year later). For MARIE-LYNN it is the present (mid 1980s). Read excerpts from the play…
