Mickey Leone

Bio:

I am now using this site to preview an upcoming show called "Week Between the Holidays" Which will be performed in Chestnut Hill PA in September 2010 as part of the Philly Fringe Festival. These are unfinished song stetches and ideas. For info contact mickeyleone@yahoo.com. Week between the Holidays Mickey Leone A Musical Play 1-4-10 Treatment and Outline Cast Rob 57 – Husband to Agnes a lawyer in large city firm Agnes 56 – Wife to Rob a real estate agent Ellen – 26 their daughter and advertising copy writer Frank – 45 Ellen’s boyfriend an executive at her ad agency Trey– 23 Their son a free lance internet designer Mary Catherine – 27 Treys girl friend a pregnant ex-nun Lilly 40 – an attractive single divorced mother who seeks refuge from the storm Treatment The play takes place between Christmas Eve and New Years Day. Act one is Christmas Eve with the entire cast gathering at the home of Rob and Agnes. Act Two is the week between the holidays. Act Three is New Year’s Day. The play takes place in a snow storm. The one window on the stage shows snow falling constantly. The family is snowed in. Stuck with each other and the dynamics and themes floating about. Rob and Agnes, a married couple who are having troubles have decided to sell the family house and divorce at last but will wait till after the holiday to announce it. Their two grown and single children come to visit on Christmas Day. They both have new partners who no one has yet met. Everyone arriving to the holiday gathering has some news that they need to share. Each thinks that their story will dominate the holiday gathering. By the end of the play they all learn much about themselves and each other. In a way the characters are a part of one body. They represent aspects of each other. We hear as thy talk to each other that they are talking to themselves as well. Though a bit dark and cynical the play is ultimately about the redemptive power of family ties and Love. Ellen the practical and profession first born arrives with her new boyfriend Frank who is more than 20 years her senior. Her younger sibling Trey, an aspiring internet computer graphic artist brings his girlfriend Mary Catherine an ex-nun. Trey is constantly wired to his I phone and Blackberry. He walks around the gathering talking to unseen people and laughing and dancing to unheard music. As the play progresses we learn more about Mary Catherine including the fact that she was until recently a virgin and is now pregnant. Mary Catherine has the charming habit of invoking the various patron saints of the church for every situation that arises. In the final scenes of Act One, Lilly, an attractive single woman arrives. She says that she simply got caught in the snow storm but that is a lie. The truth is that she actually grew up in this very house. She is newly divorced and spending her first Christmas apart from her children. The pain of this inspired her to make a pilgrimage back to her own childhood home where Christmas was always happy. Not all the family members are planning to stay over night but the historic blizzard strands them all there for the entire week. As Act One draws to a close the lights go out due to downed power lines. The act ends by candle light as the conversation reaches a fevered pitch of accusations, confusion, anger and chaos. The Three Acts of this play reflect and represent the three classic stages of a right of passage ritual or the literary “hero’s journey”. Act one – Departure - leaving what you know – establish characters and expose tension – Act one takes place in the family house. This act is the most funny and light, as the main characters of Rob and Agnes spar and the supporting characters express their various excentrsities. The act ends in chaos and half light. Act two – Adventure – Inner Struggles – this act is played on a limbo white stage with characters all in white dress. All is surreal. The space is dreamlike, liminal. Music is entrancing. All is inner. There is some soft flowing dancing. All the scenes are surreal with characters exchanging roles, morphing each other, moving between the past and present as in a dream. Nothing is realistic but rather abstract. Anything can happen. The themes are explored poetically but nothing is resolved or confronted. The audience should move into an altered reality. The script contains scenes for this act but they will evolve as the cast improvises on themes in rehearsal. Act Three – The Return – Back in The family house. It is New Years Day. The characters come down one by one from the deep sleep of the New Years celebration or metaphorically from the depth of the dreamtime together. Here the practical plot continues. This act contains the most tension, confrontation and the most drama. Issues are confronted head on. After the insights of the dream time of act two the characters are ready to do the work to move through their stuckness. By the end of the play we learn that Mary Catherine is happily pregnant and we have hopes that Trey will make a decent father. Ellen confronts Frank about her future and though they love each other deeply they decide to separate and Frank leaves. Lilly wants to buy back her family home and move her children there. Rob and Agnes come to a form of appreciation of each other. We are not sure what they will do next but they and the audience are left with a feeling of hope, understanding and admiration. Background and Themes Alcohol is a factor. Issues of secularization of religious ceremony. The family does not have a spiritual leg to stand on in this passage so they grapple with the liminal space created by the holiday retreat in only a practical and psychological way. Without the spiritual framework they are truly lost and disoriented. The purpose of a retreat is to loose oneself within a container of meaning. Since Christmas and life has lost much meaning in modern times we do not really benefit from nor look forward to retreat from the world we have created. It only raises our anxiety level. The men get together and talk - the women get together and talk. The main couples see themselves as elders and begin to understand something. They have a scene where they say some of the things that they said in the small groups. It begins the healing. The main metaphor is of the white liminal space created by a world filled with snow. Outer natural conditions as a mirror of inner landscapes.

Member Since:

September 26, 2009

Influences:

Everything I've ever heard, seen, tasted, smelled or lived through.