Cravan Arthur - Three Somebodies: Plays about Notorious Dissidents

IN SAN FRANCISCO FOR MOST of the 1990s, poet-playwright-actor Peter Carlaftes and I ran the smallbut definitely fiercetheater company known as Marilyn Monroe Memorial Theater. We wrote, cast, and directed more than twenty-five plays. Between plays, we produced and presented numerous one-night-only events featuring poetry, film, sketch comedy, and Dada performance. The mission of the company was to present demolished texts, deconstructed classics, and new works. We were entirely self-funded, disdaining the tendency for granting foundations to fund art that fit a certain profile. Ours did not. While our art was critically-acclaimed, we used the theater to explore ideas of rebellion and passion without restriction. As Peter likes to say, We had no kitchen. The stage was our stove. Indeed, it was.

The plays cooked up in Three Somebodies were all inspired by notorious dissidents, people who shook up the worldfor better or worse. Shakespeare had his kings and princes. I chose royalty of the infamous variety: Valerie Solanas, author of The S.C.U.M. Manifesto, who famously shot Andy Warhol; Arthur Cravannephew of Oscar Wilde, wild child pugilist and poetwhose legendary antics preceded and influenced the Dada movement; Jack the Ripper as sculpted through the words of T. S. Eliots poem Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Each play received its world premiere at the Marilyn, and earned high critical praise. But while each play is inspired by a person, be forewarned: the plays herein are not at all standard bio-dramas. We didnt do bio-dramas at the Marilyn. These are stripped down, twisted, juxtaposed, hard-bent works of intensity designed to bring to life a three-dimensional portrait of each of the subjects, and to examine their particular personas from the inside out. The subjects of these three plays refused to be handcuffed by linear drama so they roar to life in twists and shouts, psychedelic tremors, and whirlwind ebullience.

So take your seatbelt off and get into the groove. Catch the waves, hug the curves, and take a ride you wont soon forget.

Kat Georges

Dedicated to
dominant, secure, self-confident,
nasty, violent, selfish, independent,
proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling,
arrogant females everywhere.

I was introduced to Valerie Solanas infamous work, The S.C.U.M. Manifesto, in the early 1990s and was consumed by the comic brilliance of her writing. How could this oddball genius succumb to shooting (and almost killing) pop art superstar Andy Warhol on June 3, 1968? Was she using him as the starting point of her mission to rid the world of men? Research led to the discovery that one of Solanas main motivations for attacking Warhol was that he had allegedly promised to produce her original play, cleverly titled, Up Your Ass. On learning this, I immediately decided that she would be a great character for a play.

After shooting Warhol, Solanas was indicted and by August was sent to a mental hospital while awaiting trial. Somehow, for three days around Christmas of that year, she was let out of the hospital on bail (apparently paid for by an anonymous rich man). Warhol spent those three days riding around Manhattan in a limo and refusing to get out.

I started by determining that the play would be set in a party hosted at The Factory, and would be filled with Warhol superstars, all waiting for Warhol to show up. Instead, they get Valerieand her motherand all hell breaks loose.

I wrote and rewrote the play several times, but I wasnt satisfied. It didnt capture the madness of the era: the chaos, the crazed druginfused sparkle, the breaking of all standards of the past. In frustration, I ripped up the first scene, ready to start writing again. But something happened. I glanced at the ripped up pages and started repositioning the pieces. Characters dialogue was broken up and rearranged. It no longer made linear sense, but it had the energy I needed. I screamed and grabbed a pair of scissors and cut every page of the script into strips, cut monologues into pieces, grabbed some tape and fastened things together in a new order. It worked on the page. On the stage it was one of our most successful productions, reprised twice during our years at the Marilyn.

K. G.

DOROTHY: Valeries mother; I would do anything for her

VIVIAN: Make me like death, like heroin

GOLEM: To be in love / is to love the beloved / just as he is

BERNARD: In their faces, I see hope

VALERIE: Dont struggle or kick or raise a fuss