A two-act dramedy by Milo Shapiro featuring five or six actors
What’s it about? Ask the main character: Hi, I’m Lucy. Okay, sure, things haven’t been all-that-great with my husband, Jack, lately. Happily, I have some good news to come home with. Not so happily, when I blurt out I’m pregnant again, in the same breath Jack interjects, “I want a divorce.” Ummm…now what?
Jack, very much wanting to be a fully-invested Dad, suggests we save money by living together and “co-parenting” as friendly roommates. Is he nuts? I’m 39, still care for Jack, have the grandest, most self-absorbed mother in New York, my best-friend/cousin means well, but overshadows me with her successes, my attempts to write fall flat, I have a crush on someone I’ve never met, and suddenly my whole social life seems to be the other breast feeders from La Leche League!
Can the two of us survive this co-parenting thing as we try to get on with our lives and even…dating? Tune in for the hope, heartaches, and hilarity as yours truly, Jack, and my crazy family try to balance it all.
The history: In 2006, Jennifer Coburn’s third novel, Tales from the Crib, sold over 20,000 copies. In 2022, actor and theater-reviewer Milo Shapiro asked Jennifer if he could turn her first book, The Wife of Reilly, into a play. She’d already sold the rights to that one, but suggested that she always thought that Tales from the Crib would make a good play. Milo gave it a re-read, fully agreed, and dove right in.
So much of what Milo loved in the book was Lucy’s thoughts, which don’t make sense for her to say aloud in scenes. Rather than lose that richness, Milo had an idea: What if we see Lucy in the scenes at 39 and also see her outside the scene, in her 60s, reflecting on this time in her life and commenting on it, much like Ebenezer Scrooge visiting his past with the ghost. No one in scenes can see “Lucy-Out”, but she still gets to narrate to us what “Lucy-in” is thinking and, in some cases, advance the plot.
The staged reading: In 2023, Milo shared the script with connections at Wildsong Productions in Ocean Beach. They surprised him with an offer to cast it for a five-hour blocking effort, followed by a one-time-only straight run-through. Direction had to be minimal with so much blocking to do, but everyone involved seemed to really enjoy the script, encouraging Milo to take it further.
One outcome of the reading was that Milo and his co-director Shaun Lim agreed that, if the play were staged again, they’d recommend that the actor who plays Jack not play other roles, too; instead, find a sixth actor to play all those other parts so one actor is dedicated to Jack.
The Fringe Festival: In April of 2024, Wildsong contacted Milo to ask him if he might be able to create a one-act version of it for the San Diego Fringe Festival. Milo originally said, “There’s just too much material there to shrink it further!” But then, realizing that the two acts are quite distinct, he came back with an idea: “What if we did the opening scenes and then the narrator version of Lucy caught the audience up on the main idea of Act I and we just move forward? It turned out that that actually only took a few lines of dialogue and a few tweaks throughout the act to turn Act II into almost the entire one act play. At the time this page is being created, casting for that event is taking place, with hopes of the show being live in May 2024.
Shown above: Lucy in labor toward the end of Act I in our staged reading.
Copyright 2024, Milo Shapiro. All rights reserved.