Post by rickhodges on May 21, 2013 20:02:27 GMT
Looks like I'm the first to this party. I can talk as loud as I want to! I hear an echo!
I see many interesting works on this site. Lots of creative minds.
Let me tell you a little about my play, "Three Generations of Imbeciles."
The title comes from a famous Supreme Court case in the 1920s, Buck v. Bell, that upheld a Virginia law that forced people with mental disabilities to be sterilized as part of a eugenics program. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the opinion.
As my play opens in the 1930s, a young woman named Joyce hears those words from a judge and then is put into a hospital bed to be sterilized. It's a stark scene, but my play, believe it or not, has a triumphant ending. Joyce lives in an institution, and soon after the surgery, a baby with Down Syndrome arrives to live there. Joyce becomes her de facto mother. In the second act, the baby, Lemmy, has grown, and faces her own challenge to her right to have children.
Three Generations was staged in my hometown of Arlington, Virginia a few years ago by a community theatre, and as I intended, the two characters with intellectual disabilities were played by actors with intellectual disabilities. They did a fantastic job - and these were not token parts either, they were the main characters.
I look forward to seeing my play staged again. It's an intriguing history lesson--many people are shocked to learn about these things happening in America--and it's satisfying to see the characters defy their circumstances. The title even has a second, "in your face" meaning--at the end, despite the efforts to stop it, we end up with three generations of "imbeciles" living their lives as they please.
Hope to hear about other people's plays, and from anyone out there interested in producing mine.
-Rick
I see many interesting works on this site. Lots of creative minds.
Let me tell you a little about my play, "Three Generations of Imbeciles."
The title comes from a famous Supreme Court case in the 1920s, Buck v. Bell, that upheld a Virginia law that forced people with mental disabilities to be sterilized as part of a eugenics program. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the opinion.
As my play opens in the 1930s, a young woman named Joyce hears those words from a judge and then is put into a hospital bed to be sterilized. It's a stark scene, but my play, believe it or not, has a triumphant ending. Joyce lives in an institution, and soon after the surgery, a baby with Down Syndrome arrives to live there. Joyce becomes her de facto mother. In the second act, the baby, Lemmy, has grown, and faces her own challenge to her right to have children.
Three Generations was staged in my hometown of Arlington, Virginia a few years ago by a community theatre, and as I intended, the two characters with intellectual disabilities were played by actors with intellectual disabilities. They did a fantastic job - and these were not token parts either, they were the main characters.
I look forward to seeing my play staged again. It's an intriguing history lesson--many people are shocked to learn about these things happening in America--and it's satisfying to see the characters defy their circumstances. The title even has a second, "in your face" meaning--at the end, despite the efforts to stop it, we end up with three generations of "imbeciles" living their lives as they please.
Hope to hear about other people's plays, and from anyone out there interested in producing mine.
-Rick
