Peter M. Floyd

This needs a bit of explanation. Last summer I got a call from Ronni Marshak (whose name pops up frequently on this site, as she’s directed more of my plays than anyone else); she was producing The Tempest for the Hovey Players in Waltham, and she and Mike Haddad, the director, wanted to have the curtain speech — the one that tells people to shut off their cell phones, where the emergency exits are, and how they really ought to become subscribers — performed as if it were part of the play. That is, it would be delivered to the audience in Shakespearean style by the actress who played the Boatswain, before the actual story began.

I had to say yes, because how often do you get to write mock Shakespeare? However, I was more that a little daunted. Writing in iambic pentameter is not one of the skills they teach you in playwriting classes these days. Nonetheless, I discovered that, once I started, it was actually fun to write. It was a kind of word game (and I quite enjoy word games, from crossword puzzles to Boggle), figuring out how to find the word that expressed what I needed to say in a pattern that went: da-Dah da-Dah da-Dah da-Dah da-Dah…

When I’d finished, I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. No one would mistake my stab at the Bard’s English for the real thing, but it was a decent approximation, and got a few chuckles out of the audience. It was even mentioned in a review of the show in the Waltham News Tribune.

As there’s little likelihood that the speech will ever be used again, I offer it here, so it can preserved in some way for posterity.

(Oh, and speaking of the Hovey Players, they’ll be producing my play “The Change” as part of their Summer Shorts program this July. Mike is producing the event, and Ronni will be directing my play. See how it all fits together?)

Good passengers, I pray you, listen well:
Our ship, the Hovey, doth on rude seas sail.
This angry storm would rip our craft to bits.
Our gallant crew must work to keep her safe,
And must not be beset with clamor loud.
Therefore, I say, please muffle, if you would,
Those vulgar tools for speaking to your friends.
It is not time to talk, or even text,
‘Til we have reached our tempest’s interval.
And furthermore, for those who do partake
Of sweet tobacco grown in Western lands—
You may not do so ’til you disembark.
Should this fair ship be met with danger foul,
And should the call come to abandon ship,
Two exits here will lead you back to land.
One here behind me, going off the bow,
The other off the stern, the way you came.
For those who must the call of nature heed,
Relief is here, right off the starboard side,
After the ship has docked, or at the break.
If you feel the need to go during the storm,
Please inform a member of the crew.
The good ship Hovey will set sail again
For four more destinations through the year.
We welcome you to join us on each trek.
For cheaper passage on each odyssey,
You may subscribe, and join our happy crew.
The ticket for this current voyage now
May be deducted from the total fare.
For further details, you may go aloft ,
And speak to our good crewman up above.
Now time is short, we must begin our tale,
Of vessel found’ring in a deathly gale.

As my introductory blog entry, this will serve to represent a metaphorical champagne bottle to be smashed against the prow of my website, as it ventures out into the Sea of Metaphors Taken a Bit Too Far. So, as a way to introduce myself, herewith is the tale of How I Became a Playwright.

I’ve always loved the theater, from the time I was about six years old and went to see a stage adaptation of The Hobbit, and was completely awed. I remember very little of it now; the one image that lingers is the eerie red lights in the goblin caves that transformed the sets and platforms into a wonderfully scary hellish landscape in which it was totally plausible that dwarves and hobbits and goblins could be wandering around in. As a kid, I loved playing make-believe, but here this was make-believe taken to a much higher level. And by grown-ups, too!

Later, in middle and high school, I was able to take part in this make-believe myself by appearing in the school plays. As these plays were always musicals, and as I had never mastered the skill of singing in a consistent key, I was usually stuck in the chorus, or tiny roles like Bob Cratchit’s non-Tiny-Tim son. No matter, I had fun. It wasn’t until my junior year in high school that I finally got a big-sized part, that of Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! (a juicy, non-singing role). It was a real opportunity to step outside of myself; hitherto a severely introverted, nerdy kid who was good in math and science but hadn’t shown any sign of non-academic skills, I could really cut loose as a scenery-chewing Persian horndog.

Hey, this was fun! So, I continued to act in student and community productions for the next couple of decades. I even toyed with the notion of trying to go pro, but I knew I wasn’t that good, and anyway acting as a hobby is a lot more fun and less heartache than acting as a career.

As a naturally bookish person, I was also interested in writing, and from a very early age decided that I would someday make a living with my pen (metaphorically speaking; my handwriting is terrible enough that anything I actually do write with a pen is illegible). This was a dream I could not shake, despite the difficulty I had in actually sitting down and starting to write. When I would finally, through sheer force of will, sit myself down and make myself churn out words, I would quickly get bogged down in writing descriptions or characterizations. The prose would curdle and congeal, and soon my writing ground to a halt. The only thing I seemed to be able to write with no problem was dialog.

The solution to this all seems obvious now, but we always have to figure these things out in our own time. In my case, it happened when an idea for a short play popped into my head, and the only way I could get rid of it was to write it. And so I did, and having exorcised it, I could safely forget about it. Which I did, for over a year, until the opportunity to direct a short play as part of a festival of short plays came up. I thought it would be fun to direct something, so I looked for a ten-minute play to direct. But I couldn’t find one that caught my fancy. And then the thought came, how ’bout the one you wrote?  So I went back to take a look and thought, you know, it’s not so bad. I revised it, and submitted it to the board of the theater company, half-expecting them to turn it down. They did not turn it down. “Wow,” I thought, “That’s pretty amazing. I’ll have to write another one.” I did, and submitted that… and they accepted that one, too.

The two plays were presented (as part of the festival) in the summer of 2005 at MIT. To my delight and, well, relief more than anything else, people responded to them. (These two plays, “The Little Death” and “Possibilities,” remain among my most successful.) For the first time, it occurred to me, “You know…. maybe I could keep on writing plays….”

And that’s how we ended up here.