Model by: Gary English
Vertical truss frames a space containing a bed, an armoire, and a silhouetted figure. Hanging in a circle above is the black and white image of a face superimposed with hands, one eye peering out.
Pityriasis Rosea
by Joseph Lavy
I’ve got this skin disease. Pityriasis Rosea. They say. It’s a viral infection presenting as a rash on my trunk and arms. So far. I noticed it about two weeks ago. And it’s continuing to spread. Could be up to eight weeks before it’s gone.
It freaks me out. If it’s worse next week I’m going back to the doctor.
The doctor. I need to write that letter to the doctor proposing my topic of study. What’s his name?
To whom are we faithful?
I’d have been up earlier except my watch stopped sometime in the night. Well, not just sometime. 11:35, apparently. I’ve reset it. I hope it’s not broken.
Why be faithful to the Playwright when the Playwright will not be faithful to you? The Playwright is just an absentee father. The Playwright seduces with his beauty, his music. His form, intellect, and sensitivity. We carry his child within us. Give it birth unto the world. Legs on which to walk and a voice with which to sing. But the Playwright has gone. Fuck the patriarchy. Patriasis Rosea. A viral infection.
It’s not contagious. Pityriasis Rosea. But the rash can resemble syphilis.
Why am I here? Invisible observer of the unattainable. Coming in fleeting glimpses from flashing eyes.
Welcoming
Objecting
No matter.
The beginnings of sunrise clued me in to wake up. Watch must be wrong. I hope it’s not broken.
Should the abandoned mother be faithful to the absentee father? Absurd. She should be faithful to the child. A child undeniably of the father but on whom the father’s only true influence has been his absence. The child may not turn out how the father would have wanted, but he has no place to complain. He left. He got it started and he left.
So fuck him. Raise the child as you see fit. With your love. Your ideals. Your sweat. Your frustrations. Your passion.
Affirming an existence already denied by those who claim to matter.
By all but the tiny hands feet limbs the great heart spirit of a presence which refuses denial. Which sprang from within you.
Should I see the doctor? Write to the doctor? Which doctor? I’m terrible about names. Getting them and keeping them in my head once I have them. I think I don’t really listen when people tell me their names.
I’ve always known Narcissus in me. And I know what hides beneath the waters of his reflection.
It’s not love for himself. It’s fear. Fear that if he stops looking, he’ll cease to be.
Audio Recording
Monologue Performed by: Renee Lynch
Directed by: Elizabeth Bonjean
Joseph Lavy
Joseph Lavy has served as Producing Artistic Director of Akropolis Performance Lab, the ensemble-based company he formed with Zhenya Lavy in 2000. For APL he has written, translated, directed, and performed in The Maids (original English-language translation), Crime + Punishment (from the Dostoevsky novel), Ecce Faustus, The Glas Nocturne (from Hjalmar Söderberg’s novel, Doktor Glas), Pomegranate & Ash, Uncle Vanya, Seneca’s Oedipus, Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Jeanne the Maid, Song of Songs, and Macbeth. For APL he produced one week of plays for Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays. He was a founding member of the acclaimed New World Performance Lab, with which he was a principal actor and leader of physical training, and he served as a workleader in 1992 for Jerzy Grotowski’s Objective Program at UC-Irvine. In 2020 Joseph lead APL’s contribution to Andrei Kureichik and John Freedman’s Insulted: Belarus global protest theatre project.
Gary English
Gary English is a Stage Director and Designer with credits that include over 100 productions at many of America’s major repertory theaters including The Pittsburgh Public Theatre, The Pioneer Theatre Company, The San Francisco Playhouse, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Buffalo Studio Arena, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, The Merrimack Repertory Theatre, George St. Playhouse, The American Stage Festival, Brunswick Music Theatre, (now the Maine State Theatre), The Barter Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre, the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, The Sacramento Theatre Co., and The Berkshire Theatre Festival.
For BTF, he also directed The Miracle Worker, Side by Side by Sondheim, and American Primitive by William Gibson. He has taught at UCONN for twenty-five years and served as Head of the Department of Dramatic Arts and Founding Artistic Director for Connecticut Repertory Theatre from 1993 to 2008. He now teaches Stage Directing and Theatre and Human Rights. CRT productions he has directed include Galileo, Pentecost, and Julius Caesar. He most recently directed and designed Olives and Blood by Michael Bradford. From May of 2012 through June of 2013, Gary English served as Artistic Director of The Freedom Theatre, (TFT) in the Jenin Refugee Camp, West Bank, Palestine. He directed and designed a production of The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, which was adapted to and performed in Arabic in Jenin and throughout the West Bank. The production also toured in English internationally to theatre festivals in Brazil, The United States, Norway, Sweden, India and most recently in France in November of 2015. Gary English continues as an Artistic Associate at TFT.
Plays
Pityriasis Rosea
Don’t Look Down
Promise
Labyrinth
Psalm 104
On Apocalypses
The Heath