from The House in Scarsdale:A Memoir for the Stage Dan O'Brien Come back, come back, my wretched, feeble and unwanted child. —John Cheever For my brother characters Two men play all the roles here—an actor in his thirties, who plays Dan most of the time, and an actor in his fifties to play the "other" Dan and most every other character. The younger actor has the first line of the play, and with each new character heading the actors alternate. place & time Various, the present. notes In the margin of the script are suggestions for lighting, sound, some stage direction, as well as photographs, moving images, etc., to be displayed as video and/or projections. The excerpt presented here is approximately the first third of a play that runs about ninety minutes without an intermission. The House in Scarsdale was runner-up in the 2016 Humanitas/Center Theatre Group Playwriting Prize, and has benefited from the Center Theatre Group Writers' Workshop, residencies at the New Harmony Project and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy, and readings and workshops at Center Theatre Group, Atlantic Theatre Company, and Hartford Stage. The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena, California, Jessica Kubzansky and Michael Michetti Artistic Directors, premiered The House in Scarsdale in 2017, directed by Michael Michetti and performed by Tim Cummings and Brian Henderson. [End Page 47] 1: What Has He Given You? dan: The first thing I remember is looking up at his face. A dark place. dan: Sunlight in the window, dan: I'm playing on the floor. dan: The whole family's sleeping still. dan: My father's younger brother is sitting beside the window looking down at me. dan Smiling. With a long black beard and heavy, black-framed glasses, he looks like a hobo, and a poet. A window appears dan: He gives me a children's Bible. dan: No he's giving you something else, dan: some other kind of gift.—What's he giving me? dan: What has he given you dan: —before he walks out the door? Overcast 2: things You Do Not know skip: Hey! light, dan: Hey! July, skip: How are you? dan: —How are you? New Jersey. skip: So good to see you! dan: Good to see you! You look great. skip: Yeah right. dan: You do! skip: You look the same. Except you're about ten feet taller—Danny! dan: —Skip, thanks for answering that message I sent you. skip: Isn't Facebook amazing? dan: All I did was type your name and there you were—! skip: Too bad I couldn't get here sooner, otherwise we could've hung out! dan: Well it's not your fault [End Page 48] I've got rehearsal. skip: Oh yeah? dan: For a play. skip: That's amazing! You're an actor? dan: I write plays and uh, poems. skip: Ha ha ha!—So how long do you think it'll take to get into the city? dan: Don't know, half an hour? skip: Sorry about the mess, been driving cross-country, the kids are with their mom on Long Island, and I have to pick them up and take them to Vermont for summer camp and then how the hell do we get out of here? They're sitting in a car dan: Go left pretend at this sign. to drive. but please don't skip: Right here? dan: Go straight and then— Maybe the window has become a windshield. skip: God New Jersey's so confusing! Even worse than like Marin! dan: Is that where you live, Skip, in Marin? skip: San Francisco, but I lived in Marin for about a year afterthe divorce. dan: Oh. Right. Sorry. skip: So tell me how long's it been? dan: I don't know, like almost twenty years? skip: Are you married? dan: Our wedding was four years ago, we've lived in LA three years now, no kids and we're coming up on a right at this light not a sharp right more like— skip: One of those soft sort of bear-right kind of rights— dan: Right, and...