SETTING
The living room of an off-campus apartment at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. May 6, 1970. The kitchen entry is upstage left showing a bit of the appliances. Upstage right is the hallway leading to bathrooms and bedrooms. There are large windows stage right and stage left with the blinds down and bedsheet curtains. The furnishings of the living room are roadside rescues. The “coffee table” is the classic wooden wire holder from the telephone or electric company, round with solid sides that is laid down to make a table. The bookshelves are made from plastic milk cartons. (You might have trouble finding this in the 21st Century. Ask your parents or grandparents.) The sofa is stained, broken and bowed. There are a few black light posters of Jim Morrison and The Grateful Dead and political posters with Che Guevera and Huey Newton; but the most prominent posters are theatrical, for “Hair” and “Godspell” and “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”. There should be a dance bag on the floor and Shakespearean swords leaning against the wall and the books should be all theatrical: Chekov and Uta Hagen.
(The play begins with The Doors’ “When the Music’s Over.” But the lights only come up enough to see four people laying on the floor of the darkened apartment. Outside, there are flashlights waving by the windows and you hear men laughing , walking through the leaves and tapping on the windows.)
MALE VOICE, OFFSTAGE
Don’t tell me what to think, Samuel, I know they’s hiding a bunch a Hippies in there. Boy! Boy! You all hear me in there? Hippie boy! I know you’re in there, you Commie son of a bitch!
BENJI
Oh, save me Erato…this is not the way I’m supposed to die!
THE OTHER THREE ON THE FLOOR
SHHHHHHH!!!!!
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