The Play
La Fin du Silence
Drama (4w, 1m). Open, flexible staging; unit set. Present. Two acts with intermission.
Semifinalist at Ashland New Play Festival and a Quarterfinalist at PlayPenn.
Journey Magazine, an on-line publication, gives voice to the stories of women and girls who have experienced sexual violence. The “journey” is from victim to survivor. Simone, a woman in France, offers her story – through email – to publisher Brian Carter. She spent her childhood as an orphan in a convent under the care of nuns. While on a trip to the circus with them, she was kidnapped and raped by three men. She will submit her story in three installments and name the rapists in the last. Brian and his staff are deeply affected by the power and pain Simone reveals as she breaks her silence. They and the audience are led on a gut-wrenching journey to a final bear trap at the end.
La Fin du Silence is a drama centering on rape and violence against women and girls. It explores the pain of women remaining silent in relation to the difficulty of ending the silence and confronting the abuse. La Fin du Silence is a new, unpublished and unproduced script.
Cast of Characters
- Tami (19), an intern at Journey Magazine
- Nicole (24), the Assistant Editor
- Brian (47), the Editor and Publisher
- Simone (40), a woman in France
- Susan (28), a free-lance journalist
- (A Courier, offstage)
Script Sample
Setting
The play takes place in the present in Newburyport, Massachusetts and somewhere in France. There is an open set presenting the sparse indication of three offices: Brian’s, stage right; Nicole’s, center; and Simone’s home office, left. Brian’s office has a desk and enough seating for four people. Nicole’s office has at least one side chair for her desk. Simone’s home office area is small, with her desk and possibly a side table with wine. Each desk has a computer screen and keyboard; the two magazine offices have desk phones. Brian and Nicole’s offices are not connected but are near to each other along an imagined hallway. The “hallway” leads offstage-right, to the unseen front entry, Tami’s office and the rest of the publication departments. The shape or size of the stage is not important.
Dialect Note
Nicole and Simone must appear to speak fluent French for the small amount of French spoken.
Buzz about the Play
“When I went to theater school in NY I couldn’t get enough of the Group Theater and Clifford Odets plays. They were very popular back then and they were great plays – but more importantly, he wrote about the troubles of the times they were in.
It seems most of the great writers are off in Los Angeles because of the money in films. Most of the successful plays now are from years past.
I just finished reading the La Fin du Silence. It’s excellent. You should be really proud of your work. Your play is current and centers on an important topic of now. Great timing with all the discussions of women’s issues in the elections. Sad really. Hopefully your play and its characters will help women.
I honestly think you have a powerful play – very moving. The role of Tami is heart-breaking. Thanks for sending this to me I can’t wait to see it.”
“An Important concept, sensitively handled. And a terrific drama.
The dialogue is natural and real, and character-specific (which is and always has been my bugbear as a tyro writer). I feel the change of making the teenaged Simone’s out-of-France destination more unspecific keeps the McGuffin out of the audience’s reach until you want to reveal it.
Oh, Michael, I just think the script is so stage worthy, and so pertinent, and just so goddamned Good. I’m very glad to have been able to read it as it progressed.
I hope the Boston reading next month garners the audience response that it deserves.”
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