Monologue Monday: March in Line by Tara Meddaugh

Howdy everyone! This week we bring you March in Line by Tara Meddaugh.

This is not the first Meddaugh monologue to be featured here. That honor belongs to the ever-so-funny Ferret Envy. 

This monologue is an interestingly bizarre (or bizarrely interesting?) piece about a would-be drum major who is lining up an army of stuffed animals, ostensibly to ply their instruments but she does mention marching “to their deaths” which takes the monologue to a very interesting direction.

“march out with flutes and heads held high, and fall to your fated death…all for me.“

Note: the character’s name is Stephanie but the playwright has labelled the character as gender-neutral. Both males and females have recorded videos of this monologue.

Notice how effective it becomes when actually done in front of stuffed animals.

The full monologue may be accessed here. Don’t forget to ask the playwright for permission! (AND ENJOY!!!!!)

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And there you have it, March in Line by Tara Meddaugh, available here.

Mary Aldis

In 1915 Mary Aldis published a volume of plays which may be considered a part of the Little Theatre movement then sweeping the American theatre world. We’ve covered the little theatre movement before, especially in the post about Alice Gerstenberg. Neith Boyce is another post from that movement.

Our playwright.

In short, the Little Theatre movement was blowback against the near-monopoly big theatre companies had. One example would be that theatres in a town would be under contract to wait for a known troupe or company to come into town. This would discourage local theatre from growing. I believe it is time for a Little Theatre renaissance, but that’s for later.

“Big Theatre” I guess could be the Manila galleon of the theatre world, stopping by every so often to deliver theatre.

Chicago was a hub of the movement and that’s where Aldis worked her magic.

Where Aldis’ group did their thing.

There were a few notes in her preface that stood out:

Make what you will of that, she remarks…

She also mentions the sorts of plays they put on:

She had this to say about theatre directing:

Hehe.

Mrs. Pat and the Law

The first play in the volume seems to be the most well-known and arguably the best-written. It concerns a visiting nurse and spousal abuse. The play is supposedly based on an actual case.

The family are Irish immigrants in Chicago. Nora Flaherty is the mother of Jimmie, a boy with a chronic leg condition. Unfortunately for Nora, she is also the wife of Pat, who has a chronic case of being an abusive man-child and a useless human being.

Kindly nurse Miss Carroll visits every now and again to check on Jimmie.

We meet Nora, who works hard as a laundress. She has a massive head wound.

Miss Carroll shows up.

Miss Carroll tries her best.

That’s our playwright as Nora.

Miss Carroll leaves. Pat comes home. Acts like a sod.

Meanwhile, guess what Nora did while Pat was looking for a job getting wasted?

But Nora seems to have a touch of battered wife syndrome.

Miss Carroll returns, to inform Jimmie that she’ll get him a coat he was wanting.

Nora loses it.

So Carroll leaves and Pat promises to find work. But….he needs money.

20 cents in 1915 is sort of like five dollars in 2019. He goes drinking looking for work and Nora continues the wash.

The play ends as it does so often in real-life: the abuser goes unpunished and a child grows up in an abusive household.

That is the absolute power of the play. It doesn’t have a happy ending and it stays with you.

At the time, the portrayal of Irish in America was considered authentic by some. Pearl Vivian Willoughby even cites Aldis’ play in her 1923 doctoral thesis as an example of “local color”:

And then there’s this:

The Drama League Monthly, in its review from March 1918 seems to consider it a serious play:

I wonder how it was read. In finding memories of a college actor from the early 20s online, I found this quote: ‘he “often put the audience into convulsions of laughter” as Mr. Pat in the play “Mrs. Pat and the Law.“‘

Pat is an oaf and does some dumb stuff, but the fact he’s an abusive bastard outweighs any humor his character posseses.

Here’s a review from Alfred University’s student newspaper in 1921.

An Irish play written by a rich American.

It seems to have been a popular college theatre choice. Ithaca College performed “Mrs. Pat” in 1928 and the University of Utah performed it in 1929.

From an Austin student paper in 1934:

It was produced in a high school in Salem, Ohio in 1922. Glenville, West Virginia also produced it in 1925.

The following is from Mt. Vernon, New York in 1935.

Numerous other productions can be found, but they seem to have tapered off after the 1930s.

It was published seprately in 1923.

The Drama Class of Tankaha, Nevada

Fortunately there is no Tankaha, Nevada.

This is about one of those society ladies’ “culture clubs” whose idea of culture seems to be reading the King James version of the Old Testament.

Even Omar Khayyam drives them into a tizzy.

This reminds me of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! (set in 1906). The main character’s possession of Khayyam’s The Rubiyat is cause for concern for his family. We can also blame the Little Theatre movement for O’Neill’s success. Sigh.

One member has been assigned an Italian writer, Giacosa, but comes up short.

She has a point.

The play-within-a-play is a real play...

The good ladies discuss several questions in connection to the play.

Whaaaaa????? Really not liking Mrs. Fessenden right now.

Oh no, Miss Fessenden is on the path of wayward youth.

The play has some fun dialogue. Again, the young Miss Fessenden knows more than the so-called grown-ups. And projects a bit.

WHOA!!!! Miss Fessenden dishes it out….

I really like what Mrs. Bennett does here, standing up for the younger person.

I think this play would definitely be worth producing again despite Mrs. Fessenden’s weirdness regarding “Latin” authors. She would be even more dimwitted and xenophobic in 2019, thus making her own daughter and Mrs. Bennett a bit more “aware.”

Here’s what our old friend The Drama League Monthly said in their review:

Extreme Unction

Here Aldis gets involved in the debate over whether an afterlife exists. And she seems to have a touch of social critique as well, given the stereotypes archetypes characters she employs:

The dying prostitute isn’t very old. Probably not even out of her teens. But she is tough – at least on the surface. There is a society lady who is slumming visiting the sick, poor and indigent. She offers to read The Girl a story.

“The one about the valley…” If you’re not familiar with said Psalm, it is right here.

The Girl and The Doctor

So thus begins a religious debate and The Girl is straight to the point:

 

The Lady does admit she’s done bad stuff in her life….

I guess when you’re a dying prostitute in a play you really don’t care. Nice conflict.

Who says she needs to be sorry?

The Girl appears to be guilty of infanticide….

But it was all worth while because…

Well, first, I wonder if the double meaning and spelling of “come” is on purpose.

At least she enjoyed herself. For a short time.

Here Aldis’ dialogue comes on strong. Describing a baby as “squawking” is pretty harsh.

The tough façade fades away. She gets emotional.

So now The Lady notices a Salvation Army marching band.

Historical note: While we may know the Salvation Army mostly for its thrift stores…

Salvation Army thrift store in Ogden, Utah, USA.

Or though its Yuletide bellringers:

In the olden days, The Salvation Army had a marching band that would go through town because people really respond to evangelistic marching bands they were annoying.

Salvation Army band in Australia, 1906.

Often, when a film is set in a town between around 1900 to World War I in America, there’s an obligatory Salvation Army band (or similar) scene, including The Wild Bunch.

This is the “South Texas Temperance Union” or something…

Our play’s marching band doesn’t end in a bloody shootout. Instead The Lady asks the band’s singer, The Lassie, to help cheer up The Girl. It goes as well as you’d expect.

If you’re not familiar with the song she’s trying to sing, it’s the same one from The Wild Bunch.

The Lassie leaves.

The Doctor seems to have the mosts sense, so far.

The Doctor tells her it will be around a couple months….

The Doctor reflects on The Girl’s situation.

The Doctor makes a proposal. He wants her to report back to him on the afterlife (if possible). He has loads of questions. She thinks he’s joking.

He’s basically encouraging her to go seek out the afterlife. This puts her at ease and she falls asleep at the end, though my feeling is she may have just died.

And a contemporary assessment:

The Letter

Basically in this volume, the quality of play shows diminishing returns as one moves forward. We can look briefly at the the remaining two plays.

The Letter concerns two men who discover they shared the same woman. And she is now dead. But she left a letter and they both want to read it for some reason.

“One does not steal letters” <<< best line in the show.

Roberts proves to be one of the more progressive husbands of 1915.

He wants the letter so he can use it in his novel, not because of his affection for the dead woman. Womp womp.

Pretty much.

Temperment

This play is kinda amusing. Hugh seems to be well off and lives with a doting wife, Annabelle. However, apparently, one can be TOO doting as it seems Hugh gets tired of goodly Annabelle’s virtues. She’s ruining his life as a pianist.

Annabelle doesn’t tolerate Hugh’s douchiness one bit. Hehe.

Ha ha Hugh. Life is gonna suck for you.

And like a proper Bohemian, he’s moved to Greenwich Village.

He lives with Gladys.

Mary Aldis as Gladys.

Hugh is tired and extremely hungry.

And Gladys is no Annabelle.

She insults his art.

Hugh has nothing in this life, not even food. But he does have Gladys.

I love that stage direction: “panther spring.”

And thus ends the fable of Hugh and Annabelle and Gladys.

Mary Reynolds Aldis  was born in Chicago in 1872. She attended St. Mary’s School in Knoxville, Illinois.

She married Chicago developer Arthur T. Aldis in 1892. She founded the Lake Forest Players in 1910. Her family had a bit of a surprise.

“I never thought of publishing these plays until Margaret Anderson of Little Review fame wanted to print Extreme Unction. . . . My conservative family were startled by the picture of me on the cover.”

To found the company, Harriet Monroe remembered, Aldis “tore out partitions in an old frame cottage . . . and converted it into a practicable little playhouse. . . . This done, she proceeded to make actors out of some of her neighbors . . . holding them to a rigid schedule of rehearsals, and soothing agitated amateur nerves by posting a motto in the green room, ‘Remember, this is for fun.’

This theatre continued until 1915. After the First World War, she was president of the Visiting Nurse Association of Chicago. She was a friend of Mildred Barnes Bliss, with whom she corresponded since at least 1903.

Together with her husband, she provided financial support to numerous artistic ventures, including  Poetry magazine and, in the summer of 1923, the Wharf Players in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a theater troupe that included Harry Kemp, Mary Heaton Vorse, Frank Shay, and others. According to Kemp’s biographer, William Brevda, Aldis rescinded her patronage of the group after they held a wild party next to her Provincetown lodging and failed to invite her or any of the Players’ other wealthy patrons.

Note to starving artists: When we have our wild parties, be sure to invite our wealthy patrons so we can still afford our wild parties…it’s not like we ever work or write or anything.

She died in 1949.

Links!!!

Bio 1

Bio 2

Bio 3 (with a letter she wrote)

Her papers.

More papers.

All the plays covered in this blog.

All her work on Archive.org.

Monologue Monday: Quiche isn’t Sexy by Gabriel Davis

Howdy all and welcome back to Monologue Monday, the part of Unknown Playwrights that focuses on…monologues!!!

This week’s monologue is a fun one entitled Quiche isn’t Sexy by Gabriel Davis. We have profiled Davis’ work before in Coffee Slave, Almost 16 and Lacey’s Last Chance. This is another quirky piece.

I dunno. The monologue must be about another quiche. Sexy quiche courtesy of chef & playwright Lucy Wang.

The plot of the one-act (lifted from Amazon) is as follows:

“Jay, a burger addict, joins Meat Eaters Anonymous where he meets and falls for Jackie, a recovering lamb addict. At first, Jay serenades Jackie with vegetarian fare. However, it isn’t long before the two backslide into meat addiction and launch a food truck pushing the very product they had sworn off. While they try to hide the truth from their support group, news of their successful business spreads fast, placing the entire group’s anti-meat resolve in jeopardy.”

Jackie is disappointed that Jay made her a quiche.

The monologue ends up making quiche a metaphor for the pretense of romance.

The entire monologue can be found here.

Let’s see who makes quiche its unsexiest:

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Thanks for reading. As always we’ll focus on another Unknown Playwright on Thursday and a new monologue next Monday.

And since we’ve established that quiche is kinda sexy, it’s all about the beholder not sexy, you must ask yourself, do references to Salvador Dalí make you hot?

Feline Theatre (Florence Bell, Irene Woodbridge Clark, Frances Sankstone Mintz, Alan Rejón)

This post was prompted by a conversation with our friends over at Strange Company.

UPDATE/NEWS/EXCITING STUFF: This blog was recently featured in The Dramatist magazine (sorry, online edition only available to Dramatists Guild members – if I were in charge, I’d change this)

Beyond the musical Cats and beyond that Tennessee Williams play, — and beyond The Cat and the Canary lies a feline theatre ripe for exploration.

The Cat and the Fiddle

Our first example of said theatre is The Cat and the Fiddle – straight out of…..

The book starts with some magnificent advice for adults regarding children’s plays, which is the following:

If only the foul Mrs. Holbrook who directed our 3rd grade version of Stone Soup had such wisdom.

For those who don’t know, Hey Diddle Diddle/The Cat and the Fiddle is a well-known nursery rhyme in the English-speaking world. It goes like this:

 

It might date back as far as the 16th Century but the version most resembling what we know now was published in 1765.

This is a dramatization of that rhyme, published in 1922 when the author was 72 years of age.

From the start: CONFLICT!

Let’s explore that in detail…

I don’t blame the dog, given the nightmare fuel in this movie clip of a cat playing a fiddle:

Well, dog – that’s some skill you got there…

Emojipedia time!!!

Supposedly “over the moon” comes from the nursery rhyme – or not. Makes more sense if the moon is near the ground.

Lady Bell was kind enough to add sheet music:

I can’t read sheet music, but I heard if the notes go up, the voice goes up.

The cat gets all mad:

“Impertinence” – such a cat word.

“day week” <<< is this a typo? Does anyone know???

“You’re so vain”…of course you’ll get Carly Simon’s famous song, but in Canadian French and produced by the dude who married Celine Dion.

So the dog and cat make a bet. If cat loses, cat must leave…

Oh snap!!! Bye bye kitty cat…

The author, Lady Florence Bell, had a somewhat interesting life. She was born to an well-known Irish physician in Paris. She married another well-known chap. Through this marriage she was stepmother to Gertrude Bell, who became an archaelogist and apparently a founder of modern Jordan and Iraq (?!) – seriously, look it up.

Wikipedia claims she was “one of the few representatives of His Majesty’s Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection”

Anyhow, her stepmom Florence (our playwright) wrote a bunch of plays and books and you can read some of them here.  The Cat and the Fiddle is right here.

Before we move on to the next “cat fancy” play, we must leave you with two videos…

Here is someone rapping Hey Diddle, Diddle…I bet little kids love him.

I wish my uncle were that cool. The video and rapper right there is one of the awesomest discoveries made while researching this blog.

Now, on to the next play – The Egyptian Cat

The Egyptian Cat

I think most the world knows Ancient Egyptians worshipped cats.

Revered cats, turned into fertilizer by the usual suspects.

Thus the setting for this 1916 opus is a land full of reverence for cats.

42 bucks!!! [This is pretty much more than my plays ever made] 

Pictured: If American theatre were an emoticon.

The play opens with some serious instructions for a a giant artificial cat to be built:

“Spit fiercely.”

And it even comes with DIAGRAMS!!!!

A LOBSTER!!!!!!

The stuff dreams nightmares Satan’s nightmares are made of. 

“not too frequent”

Oh, and this is a shadow play. I don’t think wayang puppetry has anything to worry about.

This is a love story about a maiden with three suitors, of whom she loves one.

Like all cats, even special ones require cream…

Typical cat….

The Maiden asks the cat to help her get the one guy she loves…they need to escape. The cat has demands.

“GIVE ME THAT SPIDER”

The maiden does the cat’s bidding.

She explains what she needs.

The cat takes care of business…

Tough kitty – bye bye not-in-love suitors….

By the way, the word “vain” pops up here again. I know this is a different meaning of vain, but we get to hear a DIFFERENT version of Carly Simon’s song.

This English version comes from Surabaya-born Indonesian singer Ervinna ….

And like many stories, there is a happy ending.

That’s one content cat. Except they stroke her the wrong way…

The only thing I could find about the author is that she apparently lived in North Carolina, USA.

The Wolf and the Cat

This pièce de résistance appears in the 1915 tome Story-Hour Plays by Frances Sankstone Mintz.

It is taken from a fable collected by Ivan Krylov. The play is really, really short. Like short  enough for the whole play to be included right here.

But you should totally check Krylov out because according to the Wiki Gods :

“A multitude of half-legendary stories were told about his laziness, his gluttony and the squalor in which he lived,”

In this play, a big bad wolf meets Vaska, the cat.

Did y’all get that moral? Don’t be mean to people because they won’t help you later. Burning bridges.

The Hen and the Cat

An illustration is worth 1,000 words.

This fun piece of theatre is supposedly based on an African fable, but I have yet to find it.

This first scene is awesomely short:

 

Talk about exposition.

And so it goes. The cat, being a passive-aggressive weirdo, sends its child to the Hen.

And the Hen sends her kid to talk to the cat.

The cat is more “controlling stalker” than friend.

They finally get going and the plot takes a twist as aberrant as the cat’s mind:

The cat seizes her kids???? Really???

Yes, you just read the real-life true story of why cats and hens aren’t friends.

In real-life, I’ve seen chickens puff themselves up to scare cats. I should write a play about it.

The play ends with a question for the kiddos:

Good question. And I have found the answer. It must’ve been a VERY slow news day in Toronto. Probably ran out of poutine-interest stories.

The author, Frances Sankstone Mintz, appears to have been a night school/immigrant English class teacher in the American state of New Jersey.

All her other books are about turning foreigners into good Americans.

Have a gander.

Here is the book of plays she wrote, containing The Wolf and the Cat and The Hen and the Cat. Time for a sequel: The Wolf and the Cat and the Hen and the Mercedes Benz. Any takers?

And now for a real treat, there is an author out there who is continuing the tradition of cat plays and I don’t mean plays that have the cat’s head explode and get nominated for a Tony.

El Gato y el Ratón/The Cat and the Mouse

Alan Rejón has written some very interesting short plays, all in Spanish and they are on a website with plays written by others.

The plays are short enough to include here. This one has a very unique twist.

I’ve included the original Spanish, followed by a translation. And look for the twist!

Historia: Un pequeño ratón se da cuenta que está a punto de ser cazado por un gato, intentando salvarse nuestro pequeño amigo comienza una pequeña charla.

(El ratón está de espaldas cuando de repente el gato comienza a correr hacia él.)

Ratón: ¡Espera!, ¡Espera!

Gato: ¿Qué quieres?

Ratón: ¿Por qué haces esto?

Gato: ¿Qué cosa?

Ratón: Cazarme.

Gato: Pues, porque tengo hambre.

Ratón: Bueno, ¿Te gusta mi sabor y la textura de mi piel?

Gato: Humm, de hecho no, odio cuando la cola pasa por mi garganta y todavía después de unas semanas sigo escupiendo bolas de pelo blancas.

Ratón: Entonces ¿Por qué cazas ratones? No tiene sentido.

Gato: Tal vez, pero en la iglesia de Doraemon el gato que vino del futuro, nos enseñaron que para estar cerca de él debemos comer ratones pues ustedes no lo aceptan a él como el único viajero del tiempo y salvador de la comunidad gatuna.

Ratón: No puedo creer que esa sea la razón.

Gato: Hagamos un trato, te dejare libre si aceptas a Doraemon como único viajero del tiempo y salvador de la comunidad gatuna.

Ratón: Claro que no lo aceptaré, para empezar por que no existe y segundo, si lo hiciera, entonces no me convendría creer en él ya que solo quiere salvar a los felinos.

Gato: No te atrevas a decir que no existe, rata blasfema, porque está en todos lados y puede desatar su furia, además en mi iglesia tenemos una comunidad de ratones creyentes a los cuales dejamos en paz.

Ratón: Doraemon sólo era la caricatura de un gato azul, ¿Cuántos gatos azules conoces?

Gato: Yo creo que para demostrar su divinidad Doraemon eligió el color azul para que ninguna raza sea discriminada y la televisión fue la manera de extender su mensaje en nosotros.

Ratón: Bueno, explícame esto, Doraemon era un robot, ¿Por qué tendría que comer ratones si ni estomago tiene? Yo creo que tu iglesia ha inventado todo sólo para poder controlarlos.

Gato: Pues, pues… (El Gato se come al ratón) Tanta plática me abrió el apetito.

Doraemon, a hint of terror to come.

Setting: A small mouse realizes that he is about to be hunted by a cat, trying to save himself,  our little friend begins some small talk.

(The mouse is on its back when suddenly the cat starts running towards him.)

Mouse: Wait! Wait!

Cat: What do you want?

Mouse: Why are you doing this?

Cat: Doing what?

Mouse: Hunting me.

Cat: Well, because I’m hungry.

Mouse: Well, do you like my taste and the texture of my skin?

Cat: Humm, in fact no, I hate when the tail goes through my throat and even after a few weeks I keep spitting white balls of hair.

Mouse: So why are you hunting mice? It makes no sense.

Cat: Maybe, but in the church of Doraemon the cat that came from the future, we were taught that to be close to him we must eat mice because you do not accept him as the only time traveler and savior of the cat community.

Mouse: I can not believe that’s the reason.

Cat: Let’s make a deal, I’ll let you go if you accept Doraemon as the only time traveler and savior of the feline community.

Mouse: Of course I won’t accept it. To begin with because it doesn’t exist and secondly, if I did, then it would not make sense for me to believe in it since it only wants to save the felines.

Gato: Don’t you dare to say that it doesn’t exist, blasphemous rat, because it is everywhere and can unleash its fury, in addition in my church we have a community of believing mice whom we leave in peace.

Mouse: Doraemon was just the caricature of a blue cat, how many blue cats do you know?

Cat: I think that to demonstrate his divinity Doraemon chose the color blue so that no race is discriminated against and television was the way to spread his message in us.

Mouse: Well, explain this to me, Doraemon was a robot, why would he have to eat mice if he doesn’t even have a stomach? I believe that your church has invented everything just to control them.

Cat: Well, well … (The cat eats the mouse) So much talk opened my appetite.

Say what??? A play that began as a typical Tom & Jerry thing escalates into an anti-organized religion polemnic featuring its own Molloch anime character demanding dead mice.

Fortunately for us, there are several Youtube videos of this play, including one college production from UPN Morelos. And one we should term “paper bag theatre” –

Escenografía: Un callejón, con algunos botes de basura.

Personajes:

Perro Dóberman (Voz fuerte y babeando)

Perro Akita (Orgulloso y callado)

Perro Chihuahua (Trembling, talks in a singsong manner)

Perro Vagabundo (Perro/gato)

Introducción: Un día como cualquier otro 3 perros amigos paseaban por el callejón buscando algo para comer, mientras se acercaban a los botes de basura vieron a lo lejos a otro de sus amigos, un perro algo raro (flaco y con poco cabello, el perro vagabundo) al que llevaban meses sin ver… Bueno, excepto por el Chihuahua quien tendría un chimes que contarles.

Chihuahua: Oigan, oigan, adivinen qué me contaron del vagabundo.

Dóberman: No sé, dinos.

Chihuhua: ¡El pobre enloqueció y se cree un gato!

Akita: ¿Estás seguro? Yo creo que sólo son habladurías de la gente.

Chihuahua: Pues seguro, seguro, no pero…

Dóberman: (interrumpiendo) Pues vamos a ver, llamémosle.

Akita: Si es cierto no hay que burlarse de él, hay que ayudarle.

Chihuahua: Claro, claro.

Dóberman: ¡Hey vagabundo, ven!

(Vagabundo los mira y corre hacia ellos.)

Vagabundo: ¡Amigos, tiempo sin verlos!

Akita: Sí, mucho tiempo, para ser sinceros te hablamos para saber si es cierto algo que han estado diciendo de ti.

Vagabundo: ¿Qué cosa?

Akita: Pues…

Dóberman: (interrumpiendo) Que te crees un gato…

Vagabundo: Jajaja, claro que no me creo un gato…

Akita: Eso creí…

Vagabundo: ¡Soy un gato! Miren como hago Miau.

Chihuahua: No lo puedo creer.

Dóberman: Claro que no eres un gato.

Vagabundo: Sí lo soy mira como digo Miau.

Akita: Amigo no eres un gato y te lo podemos demostrar.

Vagabundo: ¿Cómo?

Akita: Bueno, para empezar si fueras un gato nosotros te perseguiríamos y no lo hacemos.

Vagabundo: Eso es porque soy un gato rudo, mira como hago Miau (con voz ruda)

Chihuahua: Eso no demuestra nada, si fueras un gato te gustaría el pescado y no te gusta.

Vagabundo: Bueno, lo que pasa es que soy un gato vegetariano, mira como hago Miau (con voz elegante y chupándose los dedos)

Dóberman: No, no, no, si fueras un gato podrías trepar a los árboles y estoy seguro que no puedes.

Vagabundo: Claro que no puedo y eso es porque soy un gato pesado, sólo mira como hago Miau (voz pesada)

Akita: Si fueras un gato serias flexible y podrías lavarte a ti mismo con la lengua.

Vagabundo: Claro que puedo, miren. (Improvisa movimientos gatunos)

Chihuahua: ¡Santos caninos!

Dóberman: Esto es muy perturbador.

Akita: Ok, ok eres un gato pero deja de hacer eso.

Vagabundo: ¿Ven? Soy un gato y digo Miau.

Dóberman: ¿Cómo aprendiste a hacer eso?

Vagabundo: Yoga.

Setting: An alley, with some garbage cans.

Characters:
Doberman (loud voice and drooling)
Akita dog (Proud and silent)
Chihuahua dog (Tembloroso, cantadito speaks)
Vagabond Dog (Dog / cat)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pics from here, here and here.

Introduction: A day like any other 3 friendly dogs walk through the alley looking for something to eat, as they approach the trash cans saw in the distance another of their friends, a somewhat weird dog (skinny and with little hair, the vagabond) who has not seen them for months … Well, except for the Chihuahua who is telling them.

Chihuahua: Hey, listen, guess what they told me about the tramp.
Doberman: I don’t know, tell us.
Chihuhua: The poor guy went crazy and thinks he’s a cat!
Akita: Are you sure? I think they are just gossiping about people.
Chihuahua: Sure, sure, no, but …
Doberman: (interrupting) Well let’s see, let’s call him.
Akita: If it’s true, don’t make fun of him, you have to help him.
Chihuahua: Sure, sure.
Doberman: Hey vagabond, come!

(Vagabond looks at them and runs towards them.)

Vagabond: Friends, long time, no see!
Akita: Yes, a long time, to be honest we’re talking to you to know if what they have been saying about you is true.
Vagabond: What did they say?
Akita: Well …
Doberman: (interrupting) That you think you’re a cat …
Vagabond: Hahaha, of course I don’t think I’m a cat …
Akita: I thought so …
Vagabond: I am a cat! Look how I meow.
Chihuahua: I can’t believe it.
Doberman: Of course you’re not a cat.
Vagabond: Yes I am, look like I say “meow”.
Akita: Friend, you’re not a cat and we can prove it to you.
Vagabond: How?
Akita: Well, to begin with if you were a cat we would chase you and we do not.
Vagabond: That’s because I’m a rough cat, look at me meow (with a rough voice)
Chihuahua: That doesn’t prove anything, if you were a cat you would like fish and you don’t.
Vagabond: Well, what happens is that I am a vegetarian cat, look at me meow (with an elegant voice and sucking fingers)
Doberman: No, no, no, if you were a cat you could climb trees and I’m sure you can not.
Vagabond: Of course I can’t and that’s because I’m a heavy cat, watch me meow (heavy voice)
Akita: If you were a cat you would be flexible and you could wash yourself with your tongue.
Vagabond: Of course I can, look. (Improvises cat movements)
Chihuahua: Holy dogs!
Doberman: This is very disturbing.
Akita: Ok, ok you’re a cat but stop doing that.
Vagabond: See? I am a cat and I say “meow.”
Doberman: How did you learn to do that?
Vagabond: Yoga.

Another twisted tail tale. So here we have another reference to the fact dogs can’t climb trees.

And fortunately for us, we have some Youtube videos of this play in action:

That last one comes with bloopers!!!

 

I don’t know much about the author. I’m assuming he’s Mexican because all the productions appear to be Mexican.

The plays are available on the website and they have a Youtube page with some videos.

And along with the Spanish theme + cats, here is a Spanish-language cover of The Cure’s The Love Cats, which against all odds and Mother Nature, manages to be weirder than the original….

 

And as a final, final special treat, here’s Catwoman herself (and Yzma) – Eartha Kitt – singing about being a different kind of cat….I dunno…she still jumps on furniture.

 

I’d eat mice for her any day, but not for that false god Doraemon.