Quick
Bright
Things
A play by Christopher Cook
Playwrights Canada Press
Toronto
Quick Bright Things © Copyright 2020 by Christopher Cook
First edition: April 2020
Jacket photo © Standret | Dreamstime.com
Author photo © Matt Reznek
Playwrights Canada Press
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Quick bright things / a play by Christopher Cook.
Names: Cook, Christopher, 1983- author.
Description: First edition.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200189085 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200189107 | ISBN 9780369100863 (softcover) | ISBN 9780369100870 (PDF) | ISBN 9780369100887 (EPUB) | ISBN 9780369100894 (Kindle)
Classification: LCC PS8605.O625 Q53 2020 | DDC C812/.6 — dc23
Playwrights Canada Press operates on Mississaugas of the Credit, Wendat, Anishinaabe, Métis, and Haudenosaunee land. It always was and always will be Indigenous land.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts — which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country — the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.
For Scott Button.
The researcher Kathleen Montague discovered dopamine in 1957. You were born decades later, and the destiny of my dopamine firing was ordained.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Notes
Production History
Epigraphs
Characters
Quick Bright Things Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Landmarks
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
About the Author
About the Author
Page List
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Introduction
I wrote the first scene of Quick Bright Things more than ten years ago, soon after I completed a program for emerging playwrights and just before I enrolled in my first undergraduate psychology course. For the next few years, I was too terrified to write the rest of the play — the characters, the story, and the subject of mental wellness all intimidated me to such an extent that I shelved the script.
Now, ten years on, I’ve taken a few more psychology courses — in fact, after completing a graduate degree, I work as a therapist in private practice — and mental wellness is a subject I often return to as a playwright.
Conversations about mental health can still be so hard. Imagine telling a new friend that you see a therapist. Why might that give us pause? Why does it feel like coming out of the mental health closet? The way we talk about wellness in our communities has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few decades. But fear, discomfort, confusion, and prejudice remain, so we must keep leaping.
As a kid, like a couple of the characters in the play, I could give you a plot summary of every single Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. I loved science fiction. It was a different way of perceiving, of knowing the world. There is an incredible number of ways of knowing in this world. Some, like sci-fi, fall into what we call (relatively) “normal.” Others don’t. We must keep leaping.
Quick Bright Things deals with mental wellness, and it’s also a play about family and the
ways that we love each other.
Ready to leap?
Christopher Cook
Vancouver, 2020
Notes
The text is meant to be delivered quickly. Don’t be polite — step on each other’s lines and talk over one another.
Although Gerome was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, he has probably been managing symptoms on his own, without medical support, for years. Similarly, his parents, Nick and Toby, have likely been managing their son’s symptoms in different ways without realizing it.
The symptoms associated with a schizophrenia diagnosis can take many different forms and vary across individuals. Gerome is one character in a play in which all of the characters are on mental wellness journeys of one kind or another. Their journeys are uniquely their own and are not generalizable.
Quick Bright Things was developed through Delinquent Theatre’s Playwrights in Residence Program and presented as part of their Write Minds festival at Progress Lab 1422, Vancouver, in March 2014, with the following cast and creative team:
Gerome: Matt Reznek
Nick: Marcus Youssef
Marion: Dawn Petten
Reid: Andrew McNee
Michael: Amitai Marmorstein
Saski: Julie McIsaac
Director: Laura McLean
Dramaturge: Christine Quintana
Quick Bright Things was first produced by Persephone Theatre, Saskatoon, in October 2017, with the following cast and creative team:
Gerome: Jordan Harvey
Nick: Rick Hughes
Marion: Anita Smith
Reid: Aaron Hursh
Michael: Samuel DeGirolamo
Saski: Heather Morrison
Director: Del Surjik
Production Dramaturge: Johnna Wright
Set Designer: Ross Nichol
Costume Designer: Terri Bauer
Lighting Designer: Byron Hnatuk
Sound Designer: Gilles Zolty
Assistant Director: Jaron Francis
Stage Manager: Jennifer Rathie-Wright
Assistant Stage Manager: Robert Grier
And ere a man hath power to say, “Behold!”
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
— Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I’m fighting normal. I’m choreographing
this other dance, where you spin across
the floor and out the door while the other
kids are still jumping on the spot
— Brad Cran, “Normal”
The New York State Mental Hygiene Department reported yesterday that new chemical agents might revolutionize the treatment of both mild and serious mental afflictions.
— Robert K. Plumb, “Drug Use Hailed in Mental Cases,” New York Times, October 7, 1955
All psychiatric treatments cause brain dysfunction . . . brain-disability is the primary “therapeutic” effect, and . . . cases are seen as successful when this impairment is interpreted as an improvement. The principle applies to lobotomy, electroshock and all psychiatric medications.
— Peter R. Breggin, “Intoxication Anosognosia: The Spellbinding Effect of Psychiatric Drugs,” International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine, 2007
Antipsychotic drugs can be regarded as implements of social control, but they can also help individuals gain relief from intense and intrusive psychiatric experiences . . . Sometimes, when people are locked into an internal reality they cannot escape, this chemical suppression can bring them back into contact with the real world, and . . . re-establish relations with other people. These benefits come at a price, however.
— Joanna Moncrieff, The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs, 2013
Characters
Gerome: A seventeen-year-old.
Nick: Gerome’s adoptive father, late forties.
Marion: Gerome’s aunt, late thirties.
Reid: Gerome’s uncle, early fifties.
Michael: Gerome’s cousin, thirteen.
Saski: Gerome’s biological mother, early thirties.
Scene
The place is Thunder Bay, Ontario. The principal setting is the open living room/dining room area of Reid and Marion’s home. Scene One begins and ends outside the house; Scene Two takes place in the bathroom; Scene Three ends in a car; Scene Five is in the woods. Of course, these settings may be represented realistically, but they need not be.
Props mentioned in the stage directions and dialogue may prove useful, but, again, liberties may be taken in terms of representation.
Time
The action occurs over one weekend, from Friday night to Sunday afternoon.
Scene One
Friday night. Nick and Gerome stand facing us downstage. They are outside of Marion and Reid’s home. The open living room/dining room area of Reid and Marion’s house is dimly lit behind them. Nick wears shorts and boat shoes; Gerome wears a worn-looking tie and suit jacket. Gerome is a little too big for his clothes. Gerome is noticeably anxious.
Nick: . . . Ready?
Gerome shakes his head.
Two hours. Tops. Eat and run.
Nick adjusts Gerome’s tie.
Then it’s you, me, and the wilds of Ontario for the rest of the weekend.
Gerome: And her.
Nick: Yeah, and her. For sure. Well I’m feeling ready.
Gerome: Ha.
Nick: I am! I’m ready. I’m just gonna text your dad and let him know we arrived.
Nick does. Gerome watches him. Nick looks up. He smiles at his son.
You look good.
Nick takes a selfie with his son — Gerome makes a “weird” face at the last moment — and then Nick sends the text. Gerome takes off his tie and puts it over his papa’s head.
Whoa whoa whoa —
Gerome gives him a look.
Gerome: Papa.
Nick lets Gerome tighten the tie around his neck. Nick’s cellphone rings.
Nick: Now your dad’s calling me. You wanna talk?
Gerome shakes his head.
Me neither.
Nick silences the phone and looks down at the tie.
Okay. We all set?
Gerome nods. Nick loosens the tie. A shift as Nick knocks and Marion enters.
Marion: I’mcomingI’mcomingI’mcoming!
Marion opens the door and hugs Nick.
There you two are! Could you have called?
Nick: Yep. Could’ve. Pretty busy driving the last day and a half.
Marion: (calling off) Reid, they’re actually here!
Every time Marion — or anyone else — yells, Nick and Gerome both brace themselves.
Nick: How are ya, Marion?
Marion: Me? Don’t worry about me. How are you and — heeeey, Geromey.
Gerome: (quietly) Hi.
Marion waves at him.
Marion: How ya feeling? Don’t be shy. It’s Auntie Marion.
Nick: He knows who you are.
Marion: Of course he does —
Marion gives Gerome a big hug. Gerome doesn’t hug back.
Look, Geromey — une, deux, trois, right to the bone — trois nails stressing whether you two were dead on the highway or ditched us or I dunno what, but I blame your papa.
Nick offers up a bottle of wine.
Nick: How about a bottle of wine to make up for it?
Marion: Oh jeez, Nick — actually no — you are now entering an Alky Free Zone —
(calling off) Reid! Come say hello to your brother!
Nick: A what?
Marion: Alky. Free. Zone. I’m not letting you cross this threshold till you ditch the booze.
Nick: It’s a Riesling. “Booze” seems a little derogatory —
Marion: I’ve never known alcohol to get offended.
Nick: It’s a hostess gift.
Marion: That is so sweet �
�� it’s the thought that counts —
Nick: And the thirty-five dollars —
Marion: And we appreciate the thought, so leave it on the porch — yep right there — you can pick it up on your way out.
Nick and Gerome move into the living room/dining room area of Reid and Marion’s home — comfortably upper middle class.
Now welcome —
(calling off) Reid, where the heck —
Reid enters from the kitchen.
Reid: Gerome. My man. Looking sharp.
Gerome smiles.
Nicky. Asshole. Thanks for showing up. I’m fucking starving.
Marion: Michael had to eat — he couldn’t wait.
Nick: That’s fine.
Marion: I’ll still make him sit with us —
(calling off) Michael!
Reid tugs on Nick’s tie.
Reid: This thing’s making me wanna poke my eyes out.
Nick: It’s Gerome’s actually.
Reid: Must be your face I’m reacting to. Where’s Toby? He’s what I like best about you.
Nick: Couldn’t take time off work —
Marion: Uh-oh, one dad’s missing. It’s not a real family vacation!
Marion sits down at the table and Nick and Reid join her. Nick sits between Reid and Marion. Gerome hangs back from the table.
(calling off) Earth to Michael, please! Get down here!
Nick: (to Gerome) You wanna go wash your hands? You didn’t forget, I’m just reminding you.
Gerome exits quickly. Reid and Marion watch him.
He’s real serious. About cleanliness.
Marion: Good. Good! Does he need help?
Nick: Washing his hands?
(to Reid) I don’t know how long we can stay.
Reid: Missed you too, broski.
Quick Bright Things Page 1
