Model by: Cully Long
A whitewashed facade of a Victorian farmhouse sitting on a wooden table.
Huzzah!
by Susan Russell
Pat
Mourning Becomes Electra.
Mann
Electra who?
Pat
What?
Mann
Electra who?
Pat
I don’t think she has a last name.
Mann
Everybody has a last name.
Pat
God doesn’t.
Mann
Yes, he does. It’s Peterson.
Pat
You are insane.
Mann
Indeed. Is it the light?
Pat
Is what the light.
Mann
Why Electra looks so good.
Pat
I am flummoxed.
Mann
You said Electra is pretty in the morning. It must be the sun.
Pat
I see what’s happened here. It’s the vagaries of language. Pitfalls everywhere. “After the storm I see again a weasel”? Hegelochus never lived that one down.
Mann
Are we circling a landing strip or are we just flying?
Pat
You have misunderstood me, which is the basis of rhetoric, not art. I will clarify. Death, not sunrise.
Mann
She’s dead?
Pat
Nope. Everybody else is. She looks pretty good.
Mann
Is this her house?
Pat
Yep.
Mann
Creepy.
Pat
She likes it creepy. Keeps the real creeps away.
Mann
Can we go in?
Pat
You want to?
Mann
I am uncertain.
Pat
That’s the best way to enter a house.
Mann
Indeed.
Pat
Shall we?
Mann
Pame!
Pat
Well played!
Mann
And then there were none.
Pat
Don’t worry. Weasels are everywhere.
Mann
Huzzah!
They enter and disappear.
Audio Recording
Pat: Jesse Suratos
Mann: Katrina Manlapig
Directed by: Sarina Temple
Susan Russell
Susan Russell is an Associate Professor in the School of Theatre at The Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate literature/criticism, and Playwriting. She received her PhD in Theatre Studies from Florida State University’s School of Theatre in 2007, her Master of Arts degree from Florida State University in 2003, and her BA in Theatre from St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, NC in 1979. She experienced a twenty-five-year career as a professional actor on and off-Broadway, and her plays have been produced by Emerging Artists Theatre, Lincoln Center, and Penn State University. Dr. Russell is co-founder and Director of The Center for Pedagogy in Arts and Design, cpad.psu.edu which is a unique place where information and the arts collaborate in extraordinary ways.
Cully Long
Cully Long is a scenic and costume designer, currently teaching at Weber State University in Ogden, UT. He has designed for regional theaters up and down the East Coast, from Maine to Georgia including the Ivoryton Playhouse, The Cape Rep, Cortland Rep, Brooklyn Gallery Players and the Salt Marsh Opera. He has also designed for television (Bar Karma for Current TV and Sports Nation for ESPN), for dancing dolphins (Dolphin Tales for the GA Aquarium), and for the Pope (as part of the design team on Pope Benedicts’s audience at Ground Zero.)
Plays
Pityriasis Rosea
Don’t Look Down
Promise
Labyrinth
Psalm 104
On Apocalypses
The Heath