Play

Sin Zapatos

____________________________________________

A full-length play

Anya Zakhour

Contact:

Anya Zakhour

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Mr Ricket, an old man who lived in the village

DALLAS, a middle-aged cobbler

TINDRA, the unmotivated, older daughter of Dallas

MITSY, the responsible, younger daughter of Dallas

ERNIE, the village president

DAVE, Tindra’s boyfriend

RABBLE, the rest of the village

SETTINGS

Dallas’s workshop

The Village Square

PRODUCTION NOTES

The play takes place in an unknown village sometime around the 1800’s.  It is a few days travel outside of a medium-sized city.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank Drew for making her write a play, and Mr Castaneda for giving her corrections, and the universe for making sure that this play will never be performed.

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SCENE 1

An old man sits off to the side of the stage in a rocking chair. The curtains are closed behind him and the spotlight is on him while he talks.

MR RICKET

(to the audience)

Hello everybody! My name is Mr Ricket.

(Voices from children behind/in the audience reply in unenthusiastic unison: Hello Mr Ricket.)

Now. How many of you are wearing shoes tonight?

(Pause)

And how do you feel about your shoes?

(Pause)

These, my dear friends, are v e r y important things for you to be thinking about right now.  For tonight you will see a tale of joy, woe, confusion, and betrayal,that may just change the way you see the world.

Pause

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was a town…

Music begins to play and the curtains slowly open. The spotlight on him goes off. The scene is a cobbler shop where a man (Dallas) is working away at a shoe.

DALLAS

(shouting towards offstage)

Tindra! Can you come in here for a second?

TINDRA

(voice from offstage)

Yeah, one second dad. I just need to finish this.

                     (Pause)

DALLAS

(shouting towards offstage)

Finish what?

                     (Pause)

Tindra! Come here, I need your help

(Pause, silence)

Tindr-!!

TINDRA

(interrupting, irritated)

What?!

DALLAS

(shouting towards offstage)

Don’t you “what” ME, young lady! Get your butt over here!

(Pause)

(Audible shuffling sounds, then Tindra appears from offstage.)

TINDRA

(entering)

What is it?

DALLAS

I got a call from Mr Hankins today.

TINDRA

(with attitude)

Okaaay?

DALLAS

(with attitude)

Looks like he never got that delivery he was waiting on

                         

(Dallas glares at Tindra)

TINDRA

(annoyed)

What?! Don’t look at me. Mitsy delivered yesterday.

DALLAS

Mitsy? That was your job.

                               (Tindra coughs and clears her throat)

TINRA

Oh, hey Mitsy!

MITSY

(entering)

Dad, I’ve got like three people on the phone right now. They’re pretty pissed off

DALLAS

(after a surprised pause)

What? What for?

(Doorbell rings)

TINDRA

(relieved)

I’ll get it!

(Tindra goes off stage)

MITSY

(relieved)

I don’t know, it seems like nobody got their deliveries this week.

DALLAS

(relieved)

What? What are you saying You told me you delivered them!

MITSY

(relieved)

Yeah, I don’t know.  I did.

DALLAS

(relieved)

Don’t give me this “I don’t know”, you do know!

MITSY

(relieved)

Whatever. What should I tell them?

DALLAS

(relieved)

just… just give me a second.

(Tindra re-enters)

TINDRA

(relieved)

Hey, uh, dad? There are some people outside wearing tissue boxes on their feet. They want to talk to you.

MITSY

(nervous giggling)

…What?? Are you kidding right now?

TINDRA

(also giggling)

No, I swear to god. Go out there and look.

(to Dallas) But Dad you should probably go, they seem pretty upset

DALLAS

(relieved)

What the hell is going on!?

(Dallas stomps off stage)

MITSY

(exasperated)

Wait. Crap.  What should I tell all these people on the phones?

TINDRA

Are you asking me? How should I know? It’s not my problem

MITSY

Really?! Don’t even start with this, Tindra, you know it was your fault.

TINDRA

(relieved)

Um, hello? I didn’t do anything

MITSY

Exactly. Like always, I had to take the fall for you and do it myself.

TINDRA

I didn’t ask you! That was your choice, not my problem.

MITSY

(ignoring her)

And where were you?? Oh right, with your little boyfriend Dave

TINDRA

Actually, I was just at his house, he wasn’t even there most of the time.

MITSY

(relieved)

Okay. Whatever. I’ll still tell dad where you were.

TINDRA

(relieved)

No! oh my god. Fine.

You so owe me.

Exits stage

MITSY

(calling to Tindra offstage)

No I don’t!

(Mitsy looks down. After a moment she starts to bite her nails. Dallas enters with a man wearing tissue boxes for shoes. The man is wearing an orange-red knitted sweater. Mitsy, startled, jerks her hand down and stands facing them.)

DALLAS

(entering with a man)

Mister Village President, this is my daughter Mitsy. She is primarily in charge of deliveries and customer service.

VP Ernie takes a look at her and smiles a big, slightly patronizing smile.

ERNIE

(waving his hand in the air)

Oh pish posh! Call me Ernie.

MITSY

Nice to meet you, Ernie

ERNIE

(in a slow, melodic voice)

The pleasure’s all mine, my dear

(to Dallas) Dallas? You better go and deal with the rabble out there before they burn down the place

                              

(Ernie laughs exaggeratedly)

DALLAS

…Yeah

Exits

ERNIE

(turning to Mitsy)

Now then, dear. Why don’t we sit down here and talk a bit? (signals to the couch)

MITSY

(suspiciously)

o…kay (sits down)

ERNIE

(sighing and sitting)

Ah this is much better

(awkward pause, ernie stares forward and smiles)

MITSY

was there something you wanted to talk about?

ERNIE

(as if breaking a train of thought)

Oh! Yes. Indeed

Let me ask you something Mitsy: Are you familiar with the word ‘k l e p t o m a n i a c’?

MITSY

Uh.. yes?

ERNIE

(crossing his legs)

Good good good. So tell me then, Mitsay. How was your night last night?

                                   

MITSY

…fine

ERNIE

(just a bit too soon, but not quite interrupting)

Great! That’s fantastic.

MITSY

…yeah

ERNIE

(just a bit too soon, but not quite interrupting)

                         

You know what? No! This is wrong. It’s disrespectful to you, its disrespectful to me. I’m just gonna come right out and ask.

MITSY

(very confused)

..O-okay

ERNIE

(shouting)

NO! Not okay Mitsy! Why did you do it?! What POSSESSED you to go and steal everyone’s shoes!!

MITSY

(completely taken off guard)

I-I… What?

ERNIE

Damnit Mitsy! Theres no getting through to you!

(towards offstage) Dave?! Dave! We’ve got a live one.

MITSY

(dumnfounded)

Wha- Huh?? No!

DAVE

(entering)

Mitsy, really? I would have never expected this from you.

MITSY

(growing exasperation)

Expected… Wha-What the hell is going on?!?

ERNIE

(Dramatically shoves his forehead in one hand and makes a “talk to the hand” sign towards Mitsy with the other)

Oh my GOD! shes lost it. Take her, Dave! Take her away before she infects us with her CRAZY!

(Dave grabs Mitsy and puts her in an arm lock. Then he starts to lead her out of the room)

DAVE

Come on, Mitsy, were done here.

MITSY

(regaining wits)

This is insane! I didn’t do anything!

                               (Curtains close)

Play Ideas

These are my three ideas for a play:


1) There are three people that  are all friends. They all hang out together, but one always feels left out.

2). A woman is trying to get to a bus station. She faces various obstacles (like wind or a river) and cannot get through. The obstacles are all people (as in, played by actors. They're not actually people in the play... if you get what i mean). For example: the wind would be people dressed in white  running into her when she's trying to walk. A man who see's her struggling comes to help. He has a shotgun. He starts shooting their way through the obstacles (lots of blood effects), and they arrive at the bus station. The bus arrives and it is also made out of people! The man kills the bus. The woman can't believe it, because that bus comes once a week. She takes the shotgun and shoots the man.

3) One morning in a village, the villagers wake up to discover that all of the shoes have disappeared. Nobody in the village knows what happened to the shoes, but they suspect mischief. Three years later, the village is completely shoeless. The village has subsequently faced a very high rate of foot-related injury. Nobody can make shoes because the shoes always disappear. One family, who has experienced all of this, is going through a very difficult time, as they are a family of cobblers. The lack of shoes creates various internal conflicts. The villagers blame them for the shoe shortage. The longer it goes on the angrier the villagers become, they decide that sacrificing the family will restore the shoes. The village takes the family to the market square and hangs them. Then shoes start to rain from the sky and kills a lot of people. A man walks away limping and says "What is the price of shoes?"

Response to "Sea of Blue Ink"

I enjoyed reading this chapter - moreso than the other one. It was sad and well-written (I think, but what do I know). Most of all it was inspiring. I mean that it was inspiring in the "look how great keeping a journal is" sense.

I'm starting to feel like that is the chief, if not only, purpose of our reading this book. That's cool though, because it's working.

I'm not sure what the grammatical standards are for these blog posts, but I hope they are low because punctuation is hard. 

Continuation Writing

The air was earthy and cool underneath the roof of the old stream bridge. Rainwater had made it's way through a gap in the roof, and was dripping steadily down onto the still form of a little girl. Although she could feel the persistent tap of the drops on her back, she refused to move. She had decided quite a while ago that she was going to curl up in a ball and lay on that bridge until she died.

She was feeling uninspired by the world and it's irritating inhabitants --especially BeeBo. BeeBo was the worst and she hated him. Most of all she hated that he was so good at finding things. Practically every week BeeBo would appear out of nowhere and disturb her when she was trying to be alone in the forest near their village.

This time will be different. She thought to herself  to take her mind off of the 'plip-plop' off the droplets. *plip... plop... plip... plop...* She stared ahead and cleared her throat. *plip.. plop... plip... plop...* Wait a second she thought to herself. Did it just get louder? She listened closer. *plop... plip... plip.. plop...* She knew it! It was getting louder... but how? With growing alarm, she scanned the area. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. *PLIP, PLOP, PLIP! PLOP!* It sounded almost like a yell now. Frantic, she closed her eyes and wrenched herself over onto her other side. As soon as she did so, the plopping ceased.

Her head hit something smooth... almost leathery. When she opened her eyes she saw two black leather boots staring back at her. She groaned loudly. "Well, hey there crazy" chimed Bee as he nudged her face with his shoe. She pushed his foot away and sat up rubbing her head. "Why are you here?" she grumbled "..and where's Bo?". "Bo's on the roof practicing his rain noises" Bee replied, ignoring her first question. "Really." she glared at him "Can you just please go away so I can die in peace?"

"Haha, no!" came Bo's voice from behind her. "You don't need to die anymore. I found a solution to our problem!" "There is a temple way out east with a doctor who can find the other half of you" said Bee. "We will get you fixed up and then we'll go get married!"

But before anything could happen or be explained, there was an avalanche and everyone died.

fin

Homework 1

I thought "Using My Notebook" was informative. If I were to begin a journal now, I'd probably have a better idea of how to go about it than I would if I hadn't read it. Even so, I didn't exactly 'enjoy' reading it. There were a lot of details that I felt weren't super important--like the paragraph describing the draft of his graphic novel.

I know that he was writing about his personal experience with using notebooks in his own life. He is telling the story of how his notebooks gave birth to his graphic novel Mr Spic Goes to Washington. I've never read Mr Spic Goes to Washington, so to me this was just a how-to guide with a bunch of extraneous words.

He wrote nicely though, so that was alright.