The Latin verb mandare, meaning "to entrust" or "to order," is the authority behind countermand. It's also behind the words mandate, command, demand, commend (which can mean "to entrust" as well as "to praise"), and mandatory. Countermand came to English via Anglo French, where the prefix cuntre- ("against") was combined with the verb mander ("to command"). It has been a part of English since the 1400s.
BREAK A LEG PRODUCTIONS seeks plays up to 25 pages (no musicals) to be
performed in our annual One Act Slam on September 28th at 2:00 pm at the Unity
Center (213 West 58th Street.)
The Slam is a one act play competition. The audience votes for their favorite
play, and the winning playwright receives a $100 cash prize
***
Nomad Theatre seeks new unproduced short plays to be a part of our upcoming
season! Our mission is to provide an immersive theatre experience by exposing
audience members to eclectic and moving stories, taking theatre outside of a
traditional theatre space and into site-specific locations.
***
92NY’s Musical Theater Development Lab is seeking playwrights and composers
specializing in Theater for Young Audiences (TYA). The Lab offers a unique
platform designed to support and showcase works specifically tailored for young
audiences, providing an invaluable opportunity for these pieces to undergo
active exploration and development.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** PRIMARY TRUST ***
Primary Trust, Eboni Booth’s play that was given an Off Broadway staging by
Roundabout Theatre Company last summer, won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
today.
The play was described by the Pulitzer board as “A simple and elegantly crafted
story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new
sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s
life and enrich an entire community.”
The critically acclaimed play follows Kenneth, a 38-year-old bookstore worker
who, in the words of Roundabout’s synopsis, “spends his evenings sipping mai
tais at the local tiki bar. When he’s suddenly laid off, Kenneth finally begins
to face a world he’s long avoided – with transformative and even comical
results.”
More...
https://deadline.com/2024/05/pulitzer-drama-eboni-booth-primary-trust-1235905776/
***
Booth, 43, grew up in the Bronx and now lives in Queens; she had a previous
play, “Paris,” staged in New York in 2020, and she has also worked as an
actress. She talked about “Primary Trust” on Monday afternoon, shortly after
learning that she had won the prestigious award.
For those of our readers who didn’t get to see it, what is “Primary Trust”
about?
“Primary Trust” is about a lonely guy with an imaginary friend, and what
happens when he loses his job.
You’re a city girl, but this play is firmly set in a small town in upstate New
York. Why?
There’s something about the Northeast that really has captured my imagination.
I really am interested in the weather, and what those towns look like, and, for
“Primary Trust,” I was interested in a place where maybe its better days were
behind it, so there’s this sense of loss that people have to live with all the
time.
Loneliness seems to be a subject you’re interested in. Where does that come
from?
I think I’m just a little mournful by nature, and a lot of my writing has been
a way to understand people I’ve loved and lost, and it’s been a way to reckon
with my anxiety about all that I’ll lose in the future. That sounds a little
overheated, but I think it was my way of trying to understand some of my
sadness and some of my hope.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/theater/eboni-booth-drama-pulitzer.html
***
Maybe you’ve seen him tucked into the corner of a dive bar, muttering to
himself now and then, empty glasses multiplying on his table. And perhaps
you’ve thought — though, it’s just as likely you haven’t — What’s up with that
guy?
In “Primary Trust,” the playwright Eboni Booth zooms in on one such man: He
lives in a fictional suburb of Rochester, N.Y., where mai tais are his drink of
choice at an unlikely tiki bar named Wally’s. He is alone and adrift in this
tender, delicately detailed portrait, though surely he has not always been.
Listen, and he’ll tell you about the moment he almost drowned and how he
learned to keep his head above water.
“Primary Trust,” which opened at the Laura Pels Theater in Manhattan on
Thursday, finds Kenneth (William Jackson Harper, of “The Good Place”)
approaching 40 when the bookstore where he’s worked for 20 years closes shop.
(The owner, played by Jay O. Sanders, needs cash for surgery.) But Kenneth has
never found a job on his own; social workers helped him get his current one
some years after he was orphaned.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/theater/primary-trust-review.html
***
Which is to say, Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust may not be set in a post-pandemic
America (in fact, it’s set in an intentionally unspecified “time before
smartphones”), and the series of traumas that have beset the life of its
protagonist, Kenneth, may lean toward the individual rather the collective, but
it still spoke to me of the emotional landscape of the moment in a way that
felt all the more surprising for how gentle, even hopeful, the play feels.
Booth doesn’t turn a blind eye to the darkness in Kenneth’s life, but the
things that weigh him down are often the substrate, rather than the center, of
what she’s choosing to focus on.
More...
https://exeuntnyc.com/reviews/review-primary-trust-at-the-laura-pels-theatre/
***
Eboni Booth’s delicate, dream-quiet play is a character study in search of a
character: thirty-eight-year-old Kenneth (William Jackson Harper, astonishing
on the edge of tears) certainly has traits—such as his belief in an imaginary
friend (Eric Berryman) and a dependence on a local tiki bar (where every
waitstaff member is played by April Matthis)—but, in order to develop, Kenneth
would need to make choices, which he’s too traumatized to do. Booth gives him
time, though, and he eventually establishes a toehold on life, aided by kindly
folk in his small town, including a warmhearted waitress (Matthis again) and
his new boss (Jay O. Sanders). Booth and the director, Knud Adams, deploy
various classic techniques (Kenneth recalls the stage manager in “Our Town”;
the musician Luke Wygodny rings a call bell periodically, like a Buddhist
mindfulness chime) to create a timeless mood.
More...
https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/theatre/primary-trust-06-05-23
***
Primary Trust | A Conversation With the Cast and Creative Team
Meet Kenneth, a 38-year-old bookstore worker who spends his evenings sipping
mai tais at the local tiki bar. When he’s suddenly laid off, Kenneth finally
begins to face a world he's long avoided – with transformative and even comical
results. Directed by Knud Adams, Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust is a touching and
inventive world-premiere play about new beginnings, old friends, and seeing the
world for the first time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyfS9gRTdhg
***
WLIW-FM is proud to partner with The WNET Group’s ALL ARTS for this special
edition of WLIW-FM In Conversation.
https://www.wliw.org/radio/captivate-podcast/primary-trust-actor-william-jackson-harper-and-playwright-eboni-booth/
“Primary Trust” is a simple story from the mind of playwright Eboni Booth:
38-year-old Kenneth (William Jackson Harper) loses his long-time job at a
bookstore, forcing him into a terrifying-but-electrifying cycle of change.
ALL ARTS facilitated a conversation between Booth and Harper about “Primary
Trust,” their individual creative processes, collaborating to bring a story
from script to stage and more. Listen to the conversation or read the
transcript here.
https://www.allarts.org/2023/06/primary-trust-william-jackson-harper-eboni-booth-roundabout-theatre-company/
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“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”
“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”
“It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.”
“...and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?”
“The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.”
“You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff”
“Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.”
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
“Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' . . . . I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”
“Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.”
“Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.”
“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”
“If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.”
“Sure, cried the tenant men,but it’s our land…We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours….That’s what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it."
"We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man."
"Yes, but the bank is only made of men."
"No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”
“She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials....She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall.”
“Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.”
“And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.”
“I'm jus' pain covered with skin.”
““Women can change better’n a man,” Ma said soothingly. “Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.”
“Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk-gets a farm and looses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, its all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on-changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.”
“And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”
“This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we". ”
“Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build, why, I'll be there.”
“I’m gettin’ tired way past where sleep rests me.”
“If you're in trouble or hurt or need–go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help–the only ones.”
“Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
“The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.”
“You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what he looks like.”