Shading the Picture
Posted by Justin Sherin on 1/03/2008As Literary Apprentice, it’s part of my job working with Ed Sobel, our Director of New Play Development and Joy Meads, our Literary Assistant, to make sure the actors and creative team have a clear perspective on the material. So I spend a lot of time in the library – often diving deep into history, looking up unfamiliar words and researching the cost of postage stamps. My work is rarely referenced in the rehearsal room, but such “deep background” can shade the creative process. In Good Boys and True, an actor familiar with Reagan-era AIDS policy is equipped with a new sense of his character’s motivations and fears.
Two books offered countless real-life parallels to the play: Our Guys, by Bernard Lefkowitz, is a piercing study of high school “jock” culture, its deep roots in American suburbs, and how a culture of entitlement can lead to crime. Restless Virgins, by Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley, features a recent sex-tape scandal at an elite New England boarding school. Both are widely available.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:51 am
This play was a manipulative and implausible disappointment. Combined with the Ignatian principles dripping with irony in the upstairs hallway, it seemed yet another concerted attack on Catholic education. In lieu of a pedophilac priest, the antagonist is the genetic absent Father, lay pillar of the community.
In the end, the poor, privileged lad, having squandered several opportunities to take reponsibility for his evil deed, and having been offered by the playwright a series of other trite excuses for his behavior, seem to emerge the victim of his pathetic dogooder absent sadistic father. “Pop” culture needs a more skilled and believable interpreter.