Young Writers Society

this is a one act play emulating Woody Allen's "Death Knocks" that I'm writing for english class. its supposed to be me speaking with an entity that I struggle with. let me know what you think, and please let me know if the title is good also. let me just say that you have to read to the end to get my point. enjoy
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[Walking down a hallway with her boyfriend, Meredith is drawn to a brown mahogany door. She steps inside. Before he has a chance to follow, the door slams shut, leaving Meredith alone. The room is white with two doors on opposite ends. The door on the right is painted red; the one on the left is multicolored. A figure, cloaked in red, face hidden, approaches Meredith.]

Meredith: What is going on? Where am I?

Love: Relax; you’re going to be fine.

Meredith: But where am I?

Love: A moral dilemma.

Meredith: [Confused] What?

Love: I’ll explain later. Oh and don’t worry about your boyfriend, he’s fine too.

Meredith: [Worried] Where’d he go? Why isn’t he here?

Love: He’s waiting for you, [motions to doors] outside, if you choose to join him.

Meredith: Why wouldn’t I choose to…? He’s my boyfriend after all.

Love: Well you see, to get to him you have to go through me.

Meredith: And who might you be?

Love: I’m Love.

Meredith: Love? [Looks closer at Love] I thought you’d be Cupid.

Love: [Groaning] That’s such a stereotype. [Sarcastically] Everyone expects me to be a flying baby shooting arrows hither and thither. [Smirks] I think this look is a little more mysterious.

Meredith: Why the mystery?

Love: Love isn’t mysterious?

Meredith: [Shrugs] I suppose.

Love: Ah ha! I see you don’t know much about me.

Meredith: [Catching herself] No, no. I know a lot about you. After all I am….[Pauses]

Love: [Before she has a chance to recover from the pause] In love?

Meredith: [Reluctantly] Yes.

Love: No you aren’t.

Meredith: [Stubbornly] Yes I am.

Love: Well you aren’t very convincing.

Meredith: Ok fine. I’m not sure. Got a problem with that?

Love: No, but your boyfriend might.

Meredith: [Shuffling her feet] Why do you care? That’s not your problem.

Love: What do you really believe about me? You don’t know much about me. There must be a reason behind that.

Meredith: You don’t exist. Not to me at least, not in this part of my life.

Love: Ahhh, I see. You don’t believe in teenage love. [Meredith shakes her head] What about all those couples who say they’re going to be together forever?

Meredith: They’re lying, or kidding themselves. Either way it only ends badly.

Love: That’s rather cynical.

Meredith: It’s realistic. [Points to Love’s red cloak] Ever wonder why red is associated with love? It’s the archetypal symbol of passion, and destruction. That’s no coincidence.

Love: Interesting. [Slowly walks across the room] Remember that moral dilemma I mentioned? Well here are your escapes, but of course you must make a choice, or else that wouldn’t be much of a dilemma.

Meredith: Where do the doors lead?

Love: I’ll tell you that later.

Meredith: [Slightly annoyed] You’re keeping me in the dark here, Love.

Love: I tend to do that.

Meredith: Fine then, I’ll ask questions until you get so sick of me you’ll have to tell me. [Thinks for a minute] How long have you been around?

Love: As long as humankind has existed.

Meredith: Are you really blind?

Love: Not completely. To heighten certain senses I have to dull others, and sometimes sight must be dulled. Other times it is amplified. It depends on the person.

Meredith: You must dull people’s rationale.

Love: What makes you say that?

Meredith: You cause men to write “woeful ballads to their mistresses’ eyebrow”. That’s a tad absurd if you ask me.

Love: [With a pensive tone] Really?

Meredith: Yes! You mess with people’s minds! You’re worse than any hallucinogen. They think they feel
things that aren’t real.

Love: I let them feel what they want to feel.

Meredith: It’s conniving! It’s devious! It’s Machiavellian! How dare you! I’ve seen too many friends fall apart after meeting you.

Love: They yearn to meet me. I represent everything they’ve ever wanted.

Meredith: Yes, they’re happy, even delirious for that small duration they know you. However, when you leave they fall apart. You show them the best aspects of life and then tear it away from them! How are they supposed to persevere with the same vigor they had before they knew your intoxication? You’re nothing more than a puppeteer, toying with human hearts.

Love: [Light adjusts, creating a bright aura around Love.] Do I look like a sadist?

Meredith: No…

Love: [Steps forwards, out of the spotlight. The light creates shadows on Love’s face, accentuating the depth of his eyes and essentially creating a demonic caricature. He steps back into the spotlight after a few moments.] Do you know who that was? That’s the dark side of me; the reason pain comes from knowing me. To receive my graces, one must deal with my doppelganger.

Meredith: [After a long pause] So you agree you have evil aspects?

Love: My design requires them, in order to compensate.

Meredith: Which face is dominant?

Love: Mine.

Meredith: How does one keep your other face from waking up?

Love: You can’t.

Meredith: Then what am I to do? Should I avoid knowing you because you can’t be trusted?

Love: You can trust me. You can trust the face speaking to you. When my other face is speaking, you’ll know. [Smiles] Now, how about we get you back home?

Meredith: Alright, [Points to doors] how do these work?

Love: The door on the right leads you to your boyfriend, but to pass through it you have to love him. You have to know it completely, not halfway. The door on the left leads you to wherever else life might lead you.

Meredith: So if I love him I go right, and if I don’t I go left?

Love: That’s it in a nutshell.

Meredith: How do I know where to go?

Love: That’s for you to figure out. Isolate your heart; let it do the talking.

[Meredith stares at both doors perplexed. As she stares, the right door vanishes.]

Love: [Didactically] Why do you suppose it did that?

Meredith: [Confidently, yet reluctantly] It was never a choice. There was no way my heart was going to let me lie to myself and walk through that door. The left is the only option. [Looks down at the floor and chuckles] This won’t end well.

Love: If he’s true to his word, then no matter what happens he’ll be there for you. That’s what he told you, right?

Meredith: Yes, how did you know that?

Love: I’m Love, what do you expect?

[Hesitantly, Meredith walks through the left door. On the other side lays a clearly marked pathway. Many people are walking along this path, but one certain face is missing.]

Meredith: What? [Turning back to the closing door.] You said he’d be here. You promised he’d be here!
You lied to me! How dare you! HOW DARE YOU!

[Love watches as Meredith is swept along by the tide of people, then smiles contentedly and marches back downstage.]

Love: All is fair in love.

all i can say, is this is awesome. i have never read anything about love as you have put it.

i give an AAAAAA++++++

kim

I like it!

I was a little confused, with the ending, but i think i've straightened it out. It's just that Love never explicitly stated that the boyfriend would be behind the left door, and so for a second I thought you had gotten the doors mixed up. But no matter.

+I like your characterization of Love, a difficult task, but you took it and ran with it.
+The dialouge was not only realistic, but also fascinating, I really was entranced by your ideas, as you laid them out.

+Also, major points for not ending the play before Merideth chooses a door. That would have been too easy and too contrived, and I was really hoping that you would let her make her choice. The ending was very surprising, I completely missed the question mark in the title.

This is my kind of play, I love to write in allegories, and allusions. I love to write slightly absurd, but strangely believeable plays. Only problem I had was that it wasn't a theater play, it seemed much better suited to film. That isn't bad or anything, just a personal preference.

All in all, a very very good work.

This was very well-written. I can honestly say that I didn't want to stop reading it. However, I did stumble over some of your words. I'm curious as to how old Meredith is. If she is your age (which, according to your miniprofile to the left, is 17), then words like "Machiavellian" and "archetypal" might be out of the norms of a 17-year-old's vocabulary. I mean, I'm 17, and I'd like to think I'm pretty smart, and I have no idea what "Machiavellian" means (I had to go back into the script to figure out how to spell it!). It just seems a little unrealistic at times, but the rest of the dialouge was pretty good.

I like the idea you were running with. Love is such an ambiguous topic to write on, and even more challenging to personify. Love has been described anywhere from a battlefield to a compass (the kind where you draw circles with), but I've never seen it described as a two-faced, cloaked being. Nice job with your descriptions -- it was actually very easy for me to imagine Love and Meredith. One little editing thing:

Love: Ahhh, I see. You don’t believe in teenage love.

Meredith: [Shakes head]

Love: What about all those couples who say they’re going to be together forever?

Most scripts I've seen would have this little section written like this:

Love: Ahhh, I see. You don’t believe in teenage love. [Meredith shakes her head.] What about all those couples who say they’re going to be together forever?

This just looks a little cleaner.

Also, what's with the maniacal laughter at the end? It just seems comical. I'd get rid of it, and make Love more sly than evil, and instead of slamming the door, he simply shuts it. I think this would fit more with what you're trying to convey.

Overall, great job. This was very interesting, and a little bittersweet at the end.

Hehe. I liked it, it was funny, yet very thought-provoking.

I really don't know anything on the love issue, but I'm sure you'll get a good mark. The only comment I can make is about your formatting. Sometime's it was a little weird, and it could help if you put the names in bold.

You can put in italics bu highlighting the text you want and clicking on the i up the top of the textbox.

I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. It reminded me greatly of some of your student-produced-written-directed-composed-performed plays/mini-musicals at our school. We call them Black-boxes and they deal with psychological dilemmas of the mind. I have to say that this would have fit perfectly with the rest of them and made me sort of nostalgic...

I enjoyed your vocabulary. The diction you used was not exactly the type I would have pictured for the character of the age the script suggests (which is 13-19). I thought you could have made love a little less amiable and a little more blunt. Love seems very distant, but he sounds too modern and kind. Archaic figureheads like Love and Death and Life and Angels are not modern speakers; nor will they ever be.

Back to the diction, I must say that it is NOT unheard of for a person of this age range use heightened vocabulary. In fact, as long as she went to school, it is more likely that she would have used it (if she paid attention) than an adult would. They tend to know less factual information and more practical knowledge anyway. So, thank you for showing that fact off.

There is not much I need to say, you know what you're writing, so I will let you do so and I will be reading more of your work, trust me.

~Mori~

This is freakin' awesome!! I loved it! If i were you teacher and you did this for a project, I'd give you a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA++++++++.

You should make this a TV show or a movie or something!!

GOOSEBUMPS ALL OVER ME! THAT WAS AMAZING!!!..^^^agree with the whole movie or something...WHOA! i am actually speechless

*APPLAUD* well done

Hmm. I generally enjoyed this a lot, but there were two things that brought the quality down in my opinion.

#1. "Love: [Turns around to show a sleeping head attached to his own. This face looks evil and demonic. Love turns to face Meredith and covers his face.]"

This seems to me to be just a little bit cliche, and a somewhat elementary plot device. I would suggest instead utilizing lighting instead of costumes, and trusting in your actor to be able to channel both the angelic and demonic sides of Love. Personally, I would combine the two; perhaps change the angle of the light, spotlight from another direction for the demonic side.

#2. "Love: [His eyes have turned scarlet. He stands in the doorway laughing maniacally.] All’s fair in love and war!"

This also seemed painfully cliche. If I were you, I would rewrite it like this:

Love watches as Meredith is swept along by the tide of people, then smiles contentedly and wanders in the opposite direction.

Love: All is fair in love.

I don't think you even need to add the "and war" at the end; the juxtaposition of love and destruction is already easy to see.

Thank you enormously to all critiquers I've done some edits, so critiques on the edited version would be helpful.

I really love this and the message. If I ever met with love, it would probably be something like this. I love this because when I was reading this it made me want to go on and that is what I want to do when reading a good story or script. Good job, I applaud you on capturing love's true story.

I can honestly say this is very moving. The message is very important and it was very emotional. It was amazing. X

Very good job! VERY,VERY, good job!

~FW~

Hey, nice job! I loved this!

Love: All is fair in love.

But, I agree with Fand, the last part is a little weird, I don't exactly understand what Love is saying. Is he saying that he's fair to people? Try rewording it. Other than that, it was wonderful!

I really liked it it was really good! Is there going to be a second part? If there is please post on my wall or contact em somehow. I didn't really see anything big wrong with it. I think you should create a sequel, about Meredith after she walks through the left door, without her boyfriend. But overall really good! I liked the mysterious factor of it, also I though Love was a girl lol that didn't turn out correct. But also I like the humor of the talk of cupid, I though that was pretty good. Keep writing your awesome!