Seminar

AUDIO	VIDEO	
	TEXT ON SCREEN: SEMINAR – This production played Nov 14, 2015 until Dec 6, 2015 at the CAA Theatre	
	TEXT ON SCREEN: “$800 A Month” featuring Nathan Howe, Andrea Houssin, Grace Lynne Kung, Ryan James Miller	
DOUGLAS: Where's the bathroom,  Kate? I need to take a piss.	Douglas, Kate, Martin, and Izzy sit in an upscale New York apartment	
KATE: Oh, uh, it's through the door and down the hall.		
DOUGLAS: You have doors on the hallways? I love it! No, seriously, 		
it's fabulous. Your family owns this place?		
KATE: We have the lease as long as one of us is, like you know, a direct whatever.		
DOUGLAS: Oh god yeah.		
MARTIN: As long as one of  you is what?		
KATE: It's, you know, it's rent controlled 		
or stabilized whatever you call it		
MARTIN: No come on. How much?		
KATE: It's very affordable		
MARTIN: You're so old New 		
York.		
DOUGLAS: Seriously, how much?		
KATE: I thought you had to pee, Douglas.		
DOUGLAS: I do. I'm desperate to pee, but I'm more 		
desperate to know how much you pay for this palace.		
KATE: It's been in our family a long time.		
MARTIN: You don't know?		
KATE: Of course I know.		
MARTIN: Well then, what is it?		
KATE. Eight hundred.		
Dollars?		
MARTIN: Eight hundred dollars? What do 		
you mean, eight hundred a day?		
KATE: Eight hundred a month.		
MARTIN: You never told me that!		
KATE: It's not that big a deal.		
MARTIN: That you have a free apartment on the upper west  side?		
How is that not a big deal? I can't believe 		
you never told me this how have I never heard this?		
KATE: It's lucky.		
MARTIN: Lucky is a seat on the subway. 		
You have 16 rooms and a view of the river.		
KATE: We have nine rooms, and you can only see the river from two of them.		
IZZY: The living room, the dining room, that bedroom...		
KATE: Okay, three. Three rooms have the view.		
DOUGLAS: Eight hundred a month. That is fabulous		
MARTIN: It's socialism for the rich.		
KATE: I didn't ask for it.		
MARTIN: The rich never do. Isn't that funny?		
People just keep giving them things		
that they don't ever even ask for.		
KATE: Being middle class doesn't make you morally superior, Martin.		
MARTIN: I'm not middle class. I'm a nobody with a 		
shitty expensive apartment in queens and  		
I didn't say it made me morally superior.		
KATE: Doesn't make you a better writer either.		
DOUGLAS: No, totally. Eight hundred a month, it's like having a grant 		
without actually having to get one. 		
Although grants aren't just about money. You have to be careful.		
Flying too under the radar, people don't like that.		
MARTIN: People don't like that. What people?		
KATE: You have to stop being so mean to him, Martin. He's important.		
MARTIN: Holy shit, Indigo Jones, the flavor of the desperation.		
KATE: He knows lots of people.		
MARTIN: I know lots of people too.		
KATE: The people you know are nobodies 		
who majored in English at itty bitty liberal arts  		
colleges on the east coast. 		
MARTIN: You mean like you?		
IZZY: Yeah, well, he went to Yado. Plus, once you have an in there,		
you have pull. He'd get you into Yado.		
MARTIN: Where the interiority and the exteriority of the  		
landscape have achieved such a supreme state of 		
harmonic convergence that the whole place is about to lift off.		
KATE: You're jealous.		
MARTIN: Jealous of that?		
KATE: You've been rejected by Yado three times.		
MARTIN: Thank you. 		
KATE: And McDowell. How many times? MARTIN: Thank you. Yes, thank you.		
I needed to be reminded. Thank you.		
IZZY: Yeah, well he's been a bunch of times. Plus I'm telling you he is 		
really hooked up. His uncle is like a world famous... 		
What was he?		
KATE: He was one of the Weathermen, 		
one of the terrorists.		
IZZY: No, he was a playwright.		
KATE:o he was a terrorist.		
IZZY: He was a famous playwright 		
who went to Harvard.		
MARTIN: So what?		
IZZY: People care about that stuff, Martin. You have to stop being such 		
a snob.		
MARTIN: I'm a snob?		
IZZY: You're a complete snob, making fun of the way he talks.		
MARTIN: He talks like an idiot. His 		
language is sub-human. It would be more interesting  		
if it were sub-human. Then we could interpret 		
what all the grunts and hand gestures were.		
We could pretend he was a very clever chimpanzee		
who was teaching us how language actually worked, 		
but he doesn't do anything as interesting as that.		
He just says things. Idiotic, meaningless,		
self-important observations about nothing.		
His words have nothing behind them. 		
There's no music. There's no joy. There's no curiosity.		
There's nothing, and I'm not talking  		
about a flat terrifying banality of evil 		
nihilistic nothing. I'm talking about nothing.		
IZZY: See that's what I mean. It's 		
talking about language like  		
that that makes it sound like you don't like him.