Live, Onstage!

Professor Featherflowers comes on stage and begins her lecture, "How to Write a Play." You're snoring already, right? That's exactly what the Stage Manager is worried about when he peeks through the curtain and tells the Professor to "jazz it up," that she needs to open with a joke. The professor then tells him she did. "You see," she says, "You don't really exist - I made you up. YOU are my opening joke!" Needless to say, he doesn't believe her and calls for his sound person, Shirley, to come out. The Professor then tells them both that they aren't real and simply characters she invented for to demonstrate her speech. From there on out it's all a question of what is real and what isn't as they are then joined by the Director, a Southern Belle, a Shakespearean Lord and a tap-dancing chicken. Also, a silent woman keeps bringing out props as the Professor makes notes in her speech. Is the Professor making all this up? If so, has she lost control of her characters? Why won't the woman speak? What is real and what isn't? This farcical existential spoof is full of deeper meanings. At least, that's what the Director believes. "Maybe we all represent the planets?" he questions. "Maybe we're the Great Lakes!" yells Shirley, "And you're Erie!"