Lary Bloom
Writer, Editor, Teacher
The Bloom Blog
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Monday, October 17, 2005
Four Blocks From Broadway (2)
A few minutes before the opening night performance of Paradise Village, my daughter Amy, who'd driven in from Allentown with her husband, David, noticed the big bottles of detergent on the set. I had told her nothing about the content of my play, only that she would somehow find it familiar. She said, "The play's about Nana, isn't it?" Ah, the big bottles of detergent gave it away. And yet the play is only partly about my late mother. It's really about every old person who is vulnerable.Though Paradise Village is a comedy and it is brief (only 30 minutes), it is intended to run deep. By the end of the first performance, Amy was thinking not only about Nana, who died in 2000, but of her other grandmother, whom she been tending for many months, and who has just moved to a nursing home.
It's hard to know what others truly felt during the play's two performances at EST (Ensemble Studio Theatre) or, as I like to say, four blocks from Broadway. There was laughter and applause. But how would I really know? Perhaps a 10-year-old child might tell me.
Adults over the two days offered generous responses. Even two veteran actors, Janet Zarish and Mark Blum (both of whom have a long list of Broadway, television, and movie credits) went out of their ways to praise it, and even came to dinner with our group afterwards. But the most telling reaction was from a boy named Ariel, only 10, who seemed to get it all -- even the nuances. He had been singing "Blue Skies" to his mother on the train into the city, and when he heard a recording of that tune introduce the play, he stood in his chair and mouthed the words. He laughed at all the comedy lines, and seemed to really appreciate the work of actors Scotty Bloch and Michael Solomon. And after the show, he asked for everyone's autograph. And he went so far as to ask Michael for a copy of the script. The next morning I got an email from Ariel. He said he and his mom had acted out Paradise Village at home.
Sometimes a writer will imagine that Ben Brantlee of the Times or one of that crowd will appear. I confess I imagined such things. But there was something about being discovered by 10-year-old Ariel that was even better. I was speaking now to a generation I never expected to affect. This accomplishment is satisfying for a 61-year-old playwright.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 7:54 AM
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