All Our Happy Days Are Stupid Read online




  ALL OUR HAPPY DAYS ARE STUPID

  McSweeney’s

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2015 Sheila Heti

  All rights reserved, including right of reproduction in whole or in part, in any form. McSweeney’s and colophon are registered trademarks of McSweeney’s, an independent publisher with wildly fluctuating resources.

  www.mcsweeneys.net

  COVER: Sara Cwynar, Contemporary Floral Arrangement 3 (Flowers Arrangements 12,683 (1963)), 2013, Chromogenic print, 60 × 44 in., 152.4 × 111.76 cm.

  E-ISBN: 978-1-94045-080-3

  Contents

  PREFACE

  FOREWORD

  Characters

  Songs

  Original Cast & Production

  2015 Cast & Production

  ACT I

  PROLOGUE

  SCENE 1

  SCENE 2

  SCENE 3

  SCENE 4

  SCENE 5

  SCENE 6

  SCENE 7

  SCENE 8

  SCENE 9

  SCENE 10

  ACT II

  SCENE 1

  SCENE 2

  SCENE 3

  SCENE 4

  SCENE 5

  SCENE 6

  SCENE 7

  SCENE 8

  SCENE 9

  SCENE 10

  SCENE 11

  SCENE 12

  SCENE 13

  SCENE 14

  About the artists

  Thank You

  PREFACE

  by Sheila Heti

  I wrote this play in 2001 for a feminist theatre company that never ended up staging it. They tried for years to make it into something of which any of us might have been proud, and in 2006, finally suggested that the play could run as a small production in an upcoming new-play festival. But after years of dramaturgical efforts to “improve” it, I had lost faith in the script and felt utterly confused by what it was, and said no. In the six years that followed, I felt like a failure and a quitter.

  After abandoning the play, I began working in a more concentrated way on what became my novel, How Should a Person Be?, which began to incorporate the story of a Sheila who had been commissioned to write a play for a feminist theatre company, and failed. At various points during the writing of the book, I would put scenes from All Our Happy Days Are Stupid into it, then take them out, then put them back in, at one point thinking the whole second act of the book should be the second act of the play. My novel contained conversations between me and my friend Margaux Williamson; why not transition to another female friendship, also in dialogue, this one fictional—the friendship of Ms. Oddi and Mrs. Sing? Although this never worked, the play informed the book hugely. I published the novel in Canada in 2010.

  A year later, the very talented writer and director Jordan Tannahill—whom I knew only passingly—contacted me after reading How Should a Person Be? to see if the play was real. After I sent him the script, he said he wanted to help me find a director for it. Then he said he would direct it himself. I was happy, skeptical, and afraid, since those frustrating years with the play were not far from memory, including my impatience with the actors’ questions. Jordan’s idea was to cast mostly non-actors—friends of his and mine—who might naturally understand the play and not ask method-y questions about their motivation, when the characters were never meant to be realistic in that way. He arranged for a backyard reading one summer afternoon so we could hear it. That afternoon, sitting around the table in the grass, for the first time ever the play felt like something real—quick and funny and better than I ever hoped it could be, no longer some ridiculous clanging thing. Also, everyone seemed to be having fun.

  Jordan and his collaborator Erin Brubacher staged the play one year later, before a tiny audience of thirty-some people each night, who sat three feet from the narrow stage in two tight rows. Those nights of performances were the happiest weeks of my year, and gave me a dizzying feeling for how things go in life, sometimes. It took me writing the play, trying to improve it over the course of four years, giving up, feeling like a failure, writing about the failure in a book of fiction, then for the book to be a success, then for a man who was thirteen when the play was written to read this book and inquire about the script, for it to come to life.

  Months after this production, on a cold, drunken evening in New York, Jordan Bass and Andrew Leland, two McSweeney’s men from San Francisco, plus a bunch of mutual friends and my brother and I, were out at various bars late at night, when it was decided that it would be a really good idea for them to try their hand at theatre producing and bring the show to New York. Of course, it had to be McSweeney’s—the name of a central character is Ms. Oddi, taken from the name of McSweeney’s original printing house, Oddi Printing, based in Iceland, whom I was communicating with in late 2001 when I wrote the play, while simultaneously going through proofs for my first book, The Middle Stories, which McSweeney’s published in the U.S. the following year.

  Maybe everything comes to pass in convoluted ways, but it’s only the most obviously convoluted events that make us see that this is so. We want things to proceed as we think they should, as would be most convenient to us—efficiently—or to happen in ways that fit our ideas of how things proceed for other people. Maybe our visions of perfection are optimistically happy, yet simple and basic and a little dumb. Because the commission didn’t proceed as I felt it should, it was a bad day for me—a decade of bad days as far as my relationship to the play was concerned. But what ended up happening was far more interesting than anything I could have arranged in my head. Perhaps our vision of how life should be is actually no fun at all, and neglects to include the exciting people we have yet to meet, who make the stupid ways life seems to happen, happy after all.

  FOREWORD

  by Jordan Tannahill

  Why play?

  It’s sort of the same question as “Why make a play?”

  It’s so easy to lose the thread of this question.

  After years of workshops and feedback and rewrites and letdowns, what began as a play can feel like the furthest thing from playing. It becomes drudgery. It becomes a vortex of existential malaise and self-doubt. The imperfections and incongruities in our narratives and characters, the ones that first made them intriguing to us, are recast as problems to be fixed. But they cannot be fixed, not without killing the very essence of why we fell in love with the work in the first place. And sometimes, that’s what we do—we kill a play. We kill characters, we kill subplots, we kill lines and scenes and jokes and images and ideas until there isn’t a drop of blood or breath left.

  When I asked Sheila if I could read All Our Happy Days Are Stupid, I asked her if I could read her original draft. The draft closest to her original impulses—the one that came before the countless revisions it was subjected to in its decade of dramaturgical purgatory. When I read that draft, I couldn’t believe how much life there was in it. It was almost terrifyingly full of life. Sprawling, disorienting, profoundly insightful, and achingly funny, it was an unbridled and joyfully theatrical plunge into a truly Heti-esque universe.

  I read the play in the summer of 2011, at a cottage. The man who owned this cottage had the head of a black bear mounted on his wall. I asked the man: Why would you kill and stuff a bear? He said, “Because he is sublime.”

  Because he is sublime. The only way he knew how to be with something so powerful and overwhelming was to kill and stuff it. His answer confounded and infuriated me. But then I realized that this is what had happened (or almost happened) to Sheila’s play. Sometimes theatres are confronted with plays that are so overwhelming, they’re at a loss as to how to “tackle” them—so they attempt to kill and st
uff them instead. To neutralize their danger by removing their essence.

  So how could I capture the beauty and power of Sheila’s play without turning it into theatrical taxidermy? I had to return to the essential question: Why play? Why make a play? There was something so intuitive about asking a group of our friends to come together and give life to this. That was, after all, the only way I have ever known how to make theatre. It’s also the most genuine answer I have to the “why play” question—the opportunity for friends to gather together to hear each other say strange and beautiful words. It’s a way for us to become other people and, in so doing, to understand new facets of ourselves.

  That summer Sheila and I organized a reading of the play in our friend Marc’s backyard. We gathered together an eclectic group of mostly non-actors—a few artists, a few writers, a heart surgeon. And the bear of this play came to life. The things that never quite seemed to work before suddenly began to work. The group seemed to innately understand both the dry, offbeat humor and the quiet pathos that suffuses the piece. Something was unlocked by liberating the script from the standard strictures of development and production. And aesthetically, something resonated with our embrace of the amateur. Of the imperfect and incongruous.

  Not long after that, we decided to do the show.

  Erin Brubacher and I directed and produced the premiere at Videofag, a tiny storefront theatre I run with William Ellis in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighborhood. We staged the show in a room measuring a little less than thirty feet by eleven feet, for an audience of thirty-three people—thirty-five, if two people sat on the speakers. It was a hurricane in a teacup, and never much felt like a night out at the theatre. More like a fabulous, surreal party that also happened to be a play. It reminded me how important it is to approach a play on its own terms. To change the context to suit a play, rather than changing the play to suit a context (e.g., a theatre).

  “Why make a play?” has become particularly resonant for me with this production, particularly considering that most of the people onstage are not formally trained, professional actors. Why come together and do this ridiculous and vulnerable thing night after night? When I watch All Our Happy Days Are Stupid, I am always aware of the meta-narrative at work: the story of friends coming together to put on a show that no one else would. And most importantly, the story of a group of people who have attempted, since embarking on this adventure, to never lose sight of the pleasure of playing.

  Characters

  JENNY ODDI

  A twelve-year-old girl, young for her age

  MS. ODDI

  Jenny’s mother, vain and a little glamorous

  MR. ODDI

  Jenny’s father, not very masculine, kind

  DANIEL SING

  A twelve-year-old boy, an individual

  MRS. SING

  Daniel’s mother, tense and hostile

  MR. SING

  Daniel’s father, silent and strong

  DAN

  Daniel, thirties, a famous singer and recluse; the singer

  PLURABELLE

  Owns the Paris hotel, an older woman, grey-haired

  THE HANDSOME MAN WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHY

  Her husband, handsome, young, muscled

  LIVINIA

  The young maid in the Paris hotel, perhaps attractive

  THE PRINCE FOR ALL SEASONS

  An arrogant prince

  THE YOUNG BRIDE

  The young bride of the prince, perhaps attractive

  THE MAN IN THE BEAR SUIT

  Weary, masculine, French

  JOHNNY ROCKETS

  A teen pop star, played by Dan

  THE HOBBLED MAN

  A hunchbacked recluse

  WAITER

  HOTELIER

  CONSTABLE 1

  CONSTABLE 2

  Songs

  (in order of appearance)

  New Ways of Living

  What Road

  A Million Votes for Jenny O

  Johnny Rockets’ Song

  Submarines Don’t Mind

  An Actor’s Revenge

  Daniel’s Song

  Don’t Become The Thing You Hated

  A Note on the Songs

  Dan Bejar wrote eight original songs for All Our Happy Days Are Stupid after Sheila Heti sent him a draft of the play in 2002, with the agreement that he would write the music for the play. He sent back an audio tape of himself singing the songs, with no indication of where they should go or which character was to sing them. The songs were never incorporated into any of the workshops until the backyard reading organized by Jordan Tannahill. However, Chris Abraham, who directed the third workshop, suggested that there could be a separate character—Dan—who performed the songs. Heti incorporated this idea into the script, and placed the songs where they seemed to go. When it appeared that the play was not going to be produced, Bejar released a number of the songs on his 2004 album, Your Blues.

  The songs can be listened to at sheilaheti.net/songs.

  Original Cast & Production

  DIRECTED BY JORDAN TANNAHILL WITH ERIN BRUBACHER AT VIDEOFAG, IN TORONTO, OCTOBER 29 – NOVEMBER 3, 2013

  LIGHTING DESIGNER

  Zack Russell

  STAGE MANAGER

  Laura Hendrickson

  SET DESIGNER

  Rae Powell

  COSTUME DESIGNER

  Jordan Tannahill and company

  PRODUCER

  Renna Reddie

  CARPENTER

  Ben Carson

  JENNY ODDI

  Lorna Wright

  MS. ODDI

  Naomi Skwarna

  MR. ODDI

  Alexander Carson

  DANIEL SING

  Nick Hune-Brown

  MRS. SING

  Becky Johnson

  MR. SING

  Jon McCurley

  DAN, JOHNNY ROCKETS

  Henri Faberge

  LIVINIA

  Erin Brubacher

  THE HANDSOME MAN WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHY, THE MAN IN THE BEAR SUIT

  Michael McManus

  THE PRINCE FOR ALL SEASONS

  Carl Wilson

  THE YOUNG BRIDE

  Meghan Swaby

  THE HOBBLED MAN, WAITER, CONSTABLE I

  Kayla Lorette

  PLURABELLE, HOTELIER, CONSTABLE 2

  Anne Wessels

  WITH NANCY BOCOCK ON SAXOPHONE

  2015 Cast & Production

  DIRECTED BY JORDAN TANNAHILL WITH ERIN BRUBACHER AT THE HARBOURFRONT CENTRE, IN TORONTO, FEBRUARY 11–14, 2015 AND THE KITCHEN, IN NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 19–28, 2015

  PRODUCTION MANAGER, LIGHTING DESIGNER

  Zack Russell

  STAGE MANAGER

  Laura Hendrickson

  SET DESIGNER

  Rae Powell

  COSTUME DESIGNER

  Juliann Wilding

  JENNY ODDI

  Lorna Wright

  MS. ODDI

  Naomi Skwarna

  MR. ODDI

  Alexander Carson

  DANIEL SING

  Nick Hune-Brown

  MRS. SING

  Becky Johnson

  MR. SING

  Jon McCurley

  DAN, JOHNNY ROCKETS

  Henri Faberge

  LIVINIA

  Erin Brubacher

  THE HANDSOME MAN WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHY, THE MAN IN THE BEAR SUIT

  Michael McManus

  THE PRINCE FOR ALL SEASONS

  Carl Wilson

  THE YOUNG BRIDE

  Meghan Swaby

  THE HOBBLED MAN, WAITER, CONSTABLE 1

  Kayla Lorette

  PLURABELLE, HOTELIER, CONSTABLE 2

  Anne Wessels

  PRODUCED AT THE KITCHEN BY SUBURBAN BEAST IN ASSOCIATION WITH MCSWEENEY’S, WARBY PARKER, AND THE HARBOURFRONT CENTRE

  ACT I

  PROLOGUE

  A curtain hangs in front of the stage. DAN stands facing it, his back to the audience, quietly playing his guitar and singing t
he final bars of “Don’t Become The Thing You Hated.” He may even have been playing when the audience came in. When he has finished singing, he turns to the audience. There is canned cheering, canned applause. He bows slightly, then turns around and pushes himself through the slit in the middle of the curtain.

  SCENE 1

  Late afternoon. A gaudy, bubble-gum Paris street scene. A parade is underway, perhaps with parade sounds. DAN, still holding his guitar, loses himself in the crowd, while from the confusion emerge JENNY, MS. ODDI, and MR. ODDI. (Their last name is pronounced OH-dee.)

  JENNY: I think this must be the best day of my life. I’m not exaggerating. I always know when I’m having one of the best days of my life. I get a little feeling down inside of me—

  MS. ODDI: All right. We’ve heard enough.

  MR. ODDI: The more you talk about it the less true it will be.

  JENNY: I don’t find that at all. I find the more I talk about it the more true it will be. Talking about it makes it so!

  MS. ODDI: Just watch the parade.

  JENNY: (crushed already) It’s awful being twelve. Really awful! Nothing you say is respected by anyone! If you could only see how much smarter than my friends I am, you would know.

  MS. ODDI: Your friends are not the issue, Jenny. We think your friends are very nice.