Always Plenty of Light at the Starlight All Night Diner
Description
A SUPER queer time travel adventure. With dinosaurs. A cross between Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, and Fried Green Tomatoes. In this charming love story, the stakes are more than life and death; they’re life or extinction.
Production Info
Full Length Drama (about 60 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
Press Quotes
“A title like ALWAYS PLENTY OF LIGHT AT THE STARLIGHT ALL NIGHT DINER tells you a lot about what kind of play you’re going to see. You’ve got a setting, a theme, a symbol and a lengthiness that suggests a healthy eccentricity … A waitress and janitor are working the overnight shift at the Starlight All Night Diner. Jessa, the waitress, is pregnant and married to someone who is not up to the task. Sam, the janitor, is rough around the edges and lives in her truck. It’s almost immediately apparent that Sam is in love with Jessa, which Sam somehow thinks she’s hiding very well. Outside, a passing comet — Comet Killjoy — is creating an unnaturally bright night sky. Enter Dr Moxie and his graduate assistant, Danni. They come to their favorite diner like a gale, bringing notes, mysterious specimen jars and a frenetic tension that soon spreads. Killjoy, they explain, is neither passing nor a comet. It’s an asteroid that will crash into the Earth and destroy life as we know it. Luckily, they seem to have a plan — one that revolves around making a fresh pot of coffee exactly at midnight. As the clock races toward midnight, Jessa and Danni tie up the loose threads of their lives. Danni tries to reconcile with her parents, who believe her attraction to other women is a rebellious phase. Jessa calls her husband and tries to get him to at least go outside and look at Killjoy (he’s too busy with I Love Lucy). Then there’s a bright light, a deafening roar, and the meat of the story begins. This play is nothing if not original. Playwright Darcy Parker Bruce makes unexpected decisions that lead to interesting, unfamiliar outcomes. She deliberately avoids common apocalyptic tropes, starting with the fact that her survivors are an old, eccentric professor, two lesbians and an expectant mother of a young girl. They have a future, but it has a likely expiration date, which actually relieves a significant amount of tension. When propagating humanity is no longer a viable option, the characters are given unprecedented freedom for self-discovery. That freedom plays out beautifully. The cast of characters feels strangely thrown together at first, but each is perfectly suited for the situation. Dr Moxie is taking a lifetime of research into its stunning conclusion. Danni’s failed reconciliation with her parents leaves her ready to build a new life somewhere else. Jessa is terrified of raising a baby on her own, and Sam wants nothing more than to be there for her.” —Zach Moning, Arts Wave
Author
Darcy Parker BruceDarcy Parker Bruce is a playwright and sound designer from New Haven, CT, and a graduate of the MFA Playwriting program at Smith College. Their currently part of the faculty at several Connecticut Colleges, where she teaches Playwriting and Theater Activism. Their work has traveled across the US from New York to Hawaii, and has been developed through Smith College, the Great Plains Theater Conference, The Bechdel Group, Strange Sun Theatre's Greenhouse Series, and 20% Theatre Chicago. They was the recipient of a 2017 Tennessee Williams Scholarship through the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and was recently granted ATHE's 2018 Judith Royer Award For Excellence in Theater, which will bring their play SOLDIER POET to Boston in August. They has been commissioned through Exquisite Corpse Theatre Company and The Navigators Theatre, where their play SOME OF US ARE BRAVE premiered in April, directed by Maureen Monterubio. Additionally, their plays have enjoyed workshop productions with 2cents Theatre, NYC's Fresh Fruit Festival, Otherworld Theatre, and Dixon Place Lounge, among others. New play ALWAYS PLENTY OF LIGHT AT THE STARLIGHT ALL NIGHT DINER was a 2016 Semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference as well as a 2016 Semi-finalist for Kitchen Dog Theatre's New Works Fest, and received its world premiere with Know Theatre of Cincinnati in 2019. New play ALL WE KNOW IS NOT ENOUGH was also a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference in 2017, is a current finalist for Unicorn Theatre’s new play-reading series, Trustus Theatre's new play-reading series, and was also a finalist for the 2016 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. New play SOLDIER POET recently premiered in D.C. with Theatre Prometheus. Their play EAST OF THE SUN was published in Summer of 2017 through Applause/ Hal Leonard’s Best American Short Play series.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 11/25/2020 |
| Pages | 58 |
| ISBN | 9780881458855 |
Special Notes
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypublishing.com
