PAu 3-551-603

For better or worse, “Amour Americaine” is mine, copywritten and registered with the Writers’ Guild. Yeah, yeah, the title stinks, but the text is mine. Well, with a lot of the plot stolen from Edmond Rostand. It’s the first female Cyrano, so whatever one thinks of it, it can be stolen. I’ve heard of plays being produced without my permission. In the 1980’s, “Frenzy Witchcraft” was done by a bunch of eager acting students upstate who saw the challenge the parts handed them. I would have just loved to have been there to hear it.

Also in the 1980’s the Midwestern Christian circuit picked up my born-again play “Redemption.” OK. It was meant to be done in churches and I’m glad that I could appeal to people radically different from me, but I don’t like the idea that changes could have been made.

“Amour” is too big and too expensive to produce as is, but I demand to be there to cut it. This thing is good because it comes from my heart and says so much about women and the way we pretend to be liberated but are still imprisoned by Society’s expectations. We talk about the quality of our character and our wit, but our asses still play a huge part in our appeal to men. What’s love got to do with it? With 1,850,000 more women than men, men can get any intellectual or personality quality they want in the preferred package. Fact of life, Sisters.

And yet…our poetess will not be denied. She chooses to die in Roxy’s arms. Is this romance or stupidity? Is it Opera because it is happening to someone else? Maybe she has done enough and given enough and experienced enough. We want to think that our degrees and prizes and citations are the greatest value, but was it all hollow next to what Roxy painting her portrait meant to her worth.

I don’t have the answers. I just ask the questions and leave the audience to answer them and I think that old  PAu 3-551-603 does just that.