From The House in Scarsdale Dan O’Brien (bio) Two actors play all the roles here—ideally one actor in his 30s, who plays Dan most of the time, and an actor in his 50s to play the “other” Dan and most every other character. The younger of these two actors has the first line of the play, and with each new character-heading the actors alternate. In the margin of the script are suggestions for lighting, sound, a few stage directions, as well as photographs, moving images, etc., to be displayed as video and/or projections. Place & Time: Various, the present. Scene 8: Dead Ends Animation: DAN: Did you go, Dan? line drawing DAN: You went with me, Dan. of a seed. DAN: What happened there? DAN: I walked down the dead-end street looking— DAN: For what? DAN: Like a schizophrenic skulking in the cul-de-sac, skunk cabbage The seed growing and wild grape vines, like a thread DAN: scrub oak and mud-soft of water. weeds we used to call The Swamp. DAN: That brook seething with broken bottle glass and rotting leaves, a rusted car battery. DAN: What did we find there? DAN: A haunted house. Smaller. The grass is Becoming grass. greener than it once was. The dogwood’s pink and maybe taller. A tree. DAN: This is not the house, this has never been the right house. DAN: Then where did we go? DAN: To Auldridge. The corner of Weaver and Griffin. Above the thrumming parkway. Highest hill in the county with The tree a view of the Sound beyond. DAN: Mexican drops its leaves. gardeners with their leaf blowers tumbling waves of plumb and gold down to curb. DAN: Chain-link fences gird the acreage now. This gate is all that’s left. Oxidized pikes are rising up with words wrought in iron reading like the entranceway to Dachau or Hades, DAN: “Auldridge.” Leaves become a DAN: Stooping to peer through the shifting labyrinth. barrow of branches, DAN: I’m straining to see the house through these trees planted long before she was just a girl of twelve DAN: —and you feel The labyrinth you were right. You know you’ve always been becomes a house right of leaves. about her. DAN: The brick house sprawls. Twin lions poised in granite. Sandstone steps. Antique cars line the driveway. DAN: The glass of the green house smearing the fire of a November sun artfully. DAN: Somebody else lives here now. DAN: Who could possibly live here now? DAN: Should I ring the bell? Could I walk inside and see her standing like a ghost in a blue dress at the bottom of the stairs to the rooms no one’s allowed into? KATHLEEN: You’ll never know how bad it was for me. DAN: I know I’m right, I’ve always known the truth. DAN: A Dalmatian swivels its ears and starts racing across the undulating lawn barking. DAN: I turn tail and run for my train laughing. The house of leaves DAN: So tell me is blown apart. what’s wrong. DAN: I don’t know who to reach out to next. DAN: You’ll always have me. DAN: But nobody else wants to talk to me. DAN: Why do you want to talk to them then? DAN: I’ve hit a dead end, and I’ve got to find the truth. DAN: And to find the truth you’ve got to ask people questions, DAN: and then people have to answer them. DAN: Who do you want to talk to still? Who is it that could answer all this for you? —Let’s do this thing! DAN: I call a guy on Cahuenga Boulevard: ADAM: If you want to go off the grid you can. But it’s never easy. E.g., no credit cards, no cell phones. No address or medical records. Cash is king. Wives call me up all the time saying, Adam, my husband’s cheating! Can you surveil him for me please? And I’m like, Ma’am, surveillance costs like two hundred an hour. I tell them, Go online and look at his statements cause...