The Russian Play and Other Short Works

Hannah Moscovitch

• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780887548093
• eBook ISBN:
  9780369102577
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Drama
• Index: Literature

Four short plays by one of Canada's exciting, new theatre voices.

In The Russian Play, the flower-shop girl tells the story of her love for the gravedigger. Essay casts a teaching assistant in the shadow of his professor as they argue the merits of a female student's paper. In USSR, a young woman relates her journey to Canada from Russia, and Mexico City follows Henry and Alice on their vacation in 1960. These four plays bring each character to life in full colour, jumping off the page before you and onto the stage.

ESSAY

Essay premiered at the SummerWorks Theatre Festival (an Absit Omen Theatre production) in Toronto on August 5th, 2005, with the following company:

JEFFREY	Jordan Pettle
PIXIE	Claire Jenkins
PROF. GALBRAITH	Richard Greenblatt

Director: Michael Rubenfeld

Assistant Director: Caleb Yong

Essay won the 2005 Contra Guys Award for Best New Script at the SummerWorks Theatre Festival.

Essay was later produced at Factory Theatre in Toronto as part of a double bill with The Russian Play in January of 2008, with the following company:

JEFFREY	Jordan Pettle
PIXIE	Claire Jenkins
PROF. GALBRAITH	Richard Greenblatt

Director: Michael Rubenfeld

Set & Costume Design: Camellia Koo

Lighting Design: Kimberly Purtell

Sound Design: Thomas Ryder Payne

Assistant Set & Costume Design: Anna Treusch

Stage Manager: Joanna Barrotta

Assistant Stage Manager: Alexandra Stephanoff

CHARACTERS

JEFFREY: thirty

PIXIE: eighteen

PROFESSOR GALBRAITH: early sixties

ESSAY

SCENE ONE

A small office on campus. An open laptop sits on a desk amidst piles of papers, files and books. The greenish hue of fluorescent lighting fills the room. Lights up on JEFFREY, behind the desk, and PIXIE, in front of it.

JEFFREY Just, uh, please take a seat while I finish this paragraph and then I’ll leave off.

PIXIE Am I early…? Or…?

JEFFREY No, no, just finishing up, just finishing up.

JEFFREY closes his laptop.

Now. Essay proposal, is that right? Essay due on the eighteenth?

PIXIE Thank you for letting me come and—

JEFFREY No, please. Just remind me. I rejected your proposal, is that…?

PIXIE Uh, yes, you did, but—

JEFFREY Right. Good. Well, my notes are vague sometimes, and my handwriting is very bad, so before you raze the field, we might as well take a closer look at it.

PIXIE (getting out her essay proposal) Okay, great, um, well what I wanted to—

JEFFREY It’s usually just a question of coming up with an alteration that will render it—

PIXIE —um, okay—

JEFFREY —more precise, more scholarly.

PIXIE Okay. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.

JEFFREY Good. Yes. Let’s talk!

PIXIE Your objections, because I—I think I can make an argument for this essay proposal.

JEFFREY This one?

PIXIE Yeah.

JEFFREY This essay proposal?

PIXIE Yes?

Beat.

JEFFREY Ah. I see. You’ve come to contest.

PIXIE Or at least I just wanted to—

JEFFREY To make your case, is that it?

PIXIE I—I just think that—that it’s possible—that it’s possible to argue, I mean if the problem is just sourcing.

JEFFREY Let me take a look at it, can I?

PIXIE hands him the essay proposal.

Let’s just see what we’ve got here before we… (laughs)… have it out.

Beat.

PIXIE (waiting, shifting) If—if you read the notes you made…

JEFFREY holds out his hand to indicate to PIXIE that she should give him a minute to finish reading.

Beat.

JEFFREY (scanning) Elizabeth Farnese. Strategies of, important contributions to. Summary, summary, more summary. Look. What you’ve got here is very interesting. A very interesting historical figure—

PIXIE Yeah, well I thought—

JEFFREY —who no doubt deserves more…. An argument could be made that this is an oversight. The historical record has failed to illuminate this neglected but highly engaging corner of European history.

PIXIE Unhunh, well—

JEFFREY Hoards of insensitive historians have obscured a very important character, as it were.

PIXIE Yeah, well—

JEFFREY And she is worthy, entitled to, a second glance, now, in our modern era. However, that said—

PIXIE Unhunh.

JEFFREY —that said, I’m not sure that for the purposes of this first year course it’s—it’s—if there would be enough material to support a ten-page essay on the topic.

PIXIE Yeah, but—

JEFFREY Ten pages. You’ll need more than a cursory—

PIXIE Yeah.

JEFFREY —more than a brief mention in a larger—

PIXIE Yeah, I have. I have plenty of materia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Poem
• Halftitle1
• Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Playwright’s Notes
• The Russian Play
• Essay
• USSR
• Mexico City
• Author Biography