Call For Submissions
Enci | Oct 29, 2012 | Comments 7 |
The Red Brick Road Theatre Company is accepting submissions of non-fiction spoken word essays for its one-night event, Living People: Only True Stories. Please submit first-person narratives, under ten minutes, to be performed live by you, the writer.
The performance is on November 16th in North Hollywood.
There will be one rehearsal with the director if your piece is chosen. Style may range from This American Life to Mortified. Performers will deliver their pieces, manuscript in hand. Complete memorization not necessary.
Submit your piece by October 30th to carriepoppy@gmail.com. Include full name, email, phone, and a photo of yourself.
Filed Under: casting • LemonList • wanted/offered
Please consider two of my short pieces. Reading time under 3 minutes each. If selected may I audition by phone? I live down in La Mesa California (San Diego) and I am 57 years old and not fond of driving to Los Angeles.
Please contact by email either way. I have done public readings of both prose and poetry pieces. My work has been published in several places (no money).
My Penis in a Nutshell
“Hey doc, don’t chop off any more than necessary. Okay?”
My flaccid attempt at humor made the nurse chortle but the surgeon ignored me, and continued sawing away at my penis. To be more accurate, he was cutting into my vas deferens, the muscular gun barrel that fires sperm.
I’d already decided that my milt was entirely too accurate at finding eggs, so I opted to shoot blanks, rather than cut back on target practice.
“Don’t make me laugh Mr. Hepburn,” he said, “If I cut the string your keister will drop down to your ankles.”
He severed the first vas deferens quickly and painlessly. We were at the surgical fifty-yard line and he had already transformed my stringed instrument into something that looked like a cat’s cradle. Not that I allowed myself to look. The nurse started talking about getting something for lunch. Spaghetti? I resisted the urge to crack wise.
The second vas deferens must have been made of steel. It may have looked over at its wounded brother, and decided to fight like a little man. Perhaps the local anesthetic was wearing off because I could feel a slight twinge of pain, then a bit more, then a bit more, until a woman screamed loud, then louder, and louder yet. I wondered where the screams were coming from.
“You okay, Mister Hepburn,” the nurse wiped my brow with a cool cloth.
“Hell no, give me another shot doc,” I screamed again, and realized that the womanly scream was mine.
The doctor gave me another shot of testes tenderizer and told me that I was lucky, because some men have an extra vas deferens.
“If I’ve got and extra one, I’m keeping it,” I said.
“You don’t have one, and even if you did, I’d take it anyway.”
“Go ahead,” I yielded, knowing he had all the cards and my scrotum in his hand.
An hour later, I steadied myself against the side of the elevator and cursed every bump, as the car seemed to grind itself, and me, all the way down to the lobby. I hobbled out to the parking lot and wobbled my way to my Nissan. I found the treasure chest of ice that I’d buried in the trunk. With loaded ice pack in hand I inched, pun intended, myself into the driver’s seat and nestled the frozen lifesaver into position.
Somehow I managed to find my way home where I spent the better part of the next few days watching my gemstones imitate the colors of pomegranates, plums and finally, prickly pears. With time on my hands I took a few minutes to call the city’s street department with the location of nine potholes between Kaiser hospital and University Avenue.
Sons of Dead Dads
By Peter Hepburn
I looked into the face of Tommy, the dead man’s son, ten like me, Irish like me, his ears the shape and size of teaspoons. We were short and freckled sons of Brooklyn whose personalities reflected second-class circumstances and first class pride.
Tommy gave me the grand tour of Sixty-First Street, showing me where the garbage cans were kept and how the dumbwaiters worked.
He showed me the back alleys, the landlady’s to look out for, and the nice people a kid could count on.
We met the first week of spring in sixty-five. I was the new kid on the block and Tommy was my personal welcoming committee. He lived with his mother and two sisters and I felt sorry for him, living with all girls and no dad. He was the only kid I knew with a dead dad, and in a few years I would join his exclusive club. Our friend Bobby joined us later the same year.
I sat with Tommy for hours, arguing over the relative funniness of The Munsters and The Adams Family, potential loopholes in priestly logic, and that never-ending battle over the musical artistry of
The Beatles versus The Rolling Stones. We nicknamed Tommy’s older sister Patty, after Leadbottom, a character in the McHale’s Navy television sitcom, and because Patty’s bottom seemed, well, a little leaden.
Besides Catholicism, our lives were dominated by a wide variety of other games that required minimal equipment, maximum creativity
and no short measure of daring. It wasn’t uncommon to run out
in front of cars to see who had the biggest balls. We imitated the suburbs with water hydrants masquerading as swimming pools, fire escapes posing as terraces and dark alleys reflecting, faintly, country roads.
Our friendship and identification with each other and with Bobby became forever blowtorched together, as our dads joined Tommy’s,
as members of the Silent Majority. Membership in the Sons of Dead Dads Society was exclusive, and the dues for inclusion, excessive.
In the late spring of 1969 my mom packed up the residue of her family. On that last day in Brooklyn I found Tommy in the vestibule
of his apartment. We said almost nothing, our backs against opposite walls. I’ll be back on weekends and in the summer, I insisted. “You won’t,” was all he said.
Uh, Peter, while this is quite awesome that you sent these, um, samples to us, we are simply the messengers and have posted this “call for submissions” for the company that is actually calling for them.
Please re-read the post and submit to the people who are asking for them.
Beyond that, thanks for giving us all a little light reading for today.
Peter had me at “penis”
Colin, I have a two person monologue called “The Boner Diaries.” Can I just send to you and you will forward? Thanks so much!
p.s., please hurry, time is of the essence.
Now let’s not get premature, Bill. I’m sure you’ll be able to rise to the occasion again when the opportunity presents itself.
In the meantime, might I suggest a soliloquy?
In that case can you delete the pieces. I thought I was sending an email. My mistake but no sense leaving it there.
PS
One piece was included in a CD and the other was under consideration for a radio program but was a bit too racy for them. Anyway..please delete from here. Thanks.
Hi Peter – I of course am happy to bow to your request to remove your “comment, but before I do – and I think I speak for all the LemonHeads who read this blog…
Please please please can we keep it up? Oh please please please! It’s just so darn entertaining and we are all so very very glad that you made the mistake and posted it and the comments just won’t make any sense whatsoever if we take it down so please please pretty please can we keep it up?
Okay I’m done. I’ll await your response to my plea. If you still feel the same way I shall remove.
Thanks Peter!