Where Julie? A Melodramatic Comedy Daniel Guyton 9780557082728 Books
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Winner of the 2001 Kennedy Center/ACTF Region II Playwriting Award. Also, winner of the Northwest Zone High School Drama Festival's Best Production, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Sound Awards in 2008 (BC, Canada). 15-year old Julie runs away from home to escape her abusive, alcoholic father, her desperately happy mother, and her autistic younger brother, only to find herself "knocked up" by her too-old Latino boyfriend, harassed by her older sister, and shunned by her Born-Again Christian friend. But, when she contemplates abortion, that's when the play gets really funny. Mature audiences only.
Where Julie? A Melodramatic Comedy Daniel Guyton 9780557082728 Books
Interesting play to read & would a fun challenge to produce; expensive to purchase relative to size of text & distance it was sent from.Product details
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Tags : Where's Julie? (A Melodramatic Comedy) [Daniel Guyton] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Winner of the 2001 Kennedy Center/ACTF Region II Playwriting Award. Also, winner of the Northwest Zone High School Drama Festival's Best Production,Daniel Guyton,Where's Julie? (A Melodramatic Comedy),lulu.com,0557082722,FICTION General,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
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Where Julie? A Melodramatic Comedy Daniel Guyton 9780557082728 Books Reviews
"Where's Julie? An Uncomfortably Hysterical Play"
Review Analysis by Kat Reynolds
Where's Julie?, a play written by Kennedy Center short-play award winner Daniel Guyton, takes audiences on a journey through the lives and living room of an exceptionally generic American family. Correction an American family who is exceptionally crazy! If you enjoy the humor of South Park or Family Guy, you are sure to enjoy Guyton's dark comedies, of which this play is one of the best.
The script follows the young character Julie in her quest to decide whether to keep or abort her unborn baby. She ultimately finds her answer with guidance from a crew of characters such as the loveably racist Mom, atheist sister Allison, and stoner boyfriend Hector. Each character fulfills their own needs as they share moments of clarity with the audience. Throughout the play, Guyton poignantly introduces two more unforgettable roles through The Running Crew. These two Dick Van Dyke-esque comedians bring the audience back to reality and fill in gaps on behalf of a missing intermission and curtain call. All of these characters highlight two themes which Guyton's plays discuss despicably loveable characters, and a matriarch's struggle to keep order. If you are an audience member who enjoys American family parodies, I suggest you look up Guyton's next play performance of Where's Julie? and go see it!
The play's script opens with a picture perfect set of a 1950's household, with one exception. A Nintendo set. This is the play's central prop, and represents the broken family unit. As a tertiary plotline, the audience follows the game set and its main player, Jeffrey, on a quest to fix the machine. Next, Guyton introduces the central family parental units appropriately named Mom and Dad. These two present obstacles as Mom desperately tries to earn love and attention from her husband, while Dad desperately tries to fill his various dinner plates. As the parental figures attempt to create order in their own home, two new characters are introduced across town in Allison's apartment.
Julie and Allison are sisters who have left Mom and Dad's nest in search of Band-Aids for their own lives one needs a job and the other a pregnancy test. Allison presents her symbolic Nintendo as her failure to get a grip on life because Julie is "in the way." Julie meanwhile is creating a butterfly effect in each household as the readers see how her decisions affect everyone around her. This script culminates with her most crucial decision SEX. In Allison's absence (cue melodramatic music), Hector takes the scene as Julie's clueless, stoner boyfriend. Within a conversation, Julie unveils to Hector that he is, in fact, the father of her unborn child. How else can he appropriately respond, but lighting up a fat joint?
With no support from her sister or boyfriend, Julie's last resort is God, or something close to it. Margaret is a religion-loving, Jesus-praying sixteen year old who puts God "on hold" to help Julie through her problem. Another character blends into the background, but must not go unmentioned. Jeffrey is Julie's Autistic brother, and has been reviewed previously as a representation of Jesus. He is a character that challenges the family to make their own decisions by uttering the word NINTENDO as creatively as Bill and Ted say "DUDE!" Who knew one mid-90's video game could present so much compassion, frustration, and final advice when creatively placed in dialogue?
As mentioned before, the play introduces two characters as comic relief. The Running Crew's conversations kindly, but consistently remind the audience that this is JUST a play, and the characters are JUST actors, and not representations of actual people. I begin to wonder whether Guyton created The Running Crew to get some laughs, take the heat off of himself, or to really make a point that actors are "...actors! They don't have...feelings....or anything." I have concluded, after much time spent dissecting the script, that The Running Crew are ultimately a set up for the final scene. This is the scene which literally brings the family unit into the audience, and forces the patrons to accept the dysfunctional clan as they are and will always be - exceptionally crazy!
Guyton has a great talent in finding humans' most despicable traits and creating loveable characters who embody those behaviors in their daily routine. For example, in his play I'm Not Gay!, the character Gary actually murders his wife so she will not gab to their neighbors that Gary is, in fact, gay. The audience allows him this relief because we feel sympathy for his need to be what he considers normal. Similar characters appear in Where's Julie? when Mom blurts out oblivious racist generalizations, and when Dad beats his son for being a "retard." In this script the audience cuts Dad a break because, as viewers, we suppose that Jeffrey is actually an all-knowing Jesus figure, and Dad is far less mentally capable and doesn't know any better. We forgive Mom because, what can we say except "bless her little heart."
Hector provides another example of a despicable character as he represents a 23 year old that not only sleeps with a 15 year old, but also sells, steals, and smokes drugs! I cut him a break because he eventually decides to keep his day job to support his budding family, and he appears to sincerely love Julie. Would this attitude sway a judge in court? No! But somehow, Guyton convinces his audience to care for these characters who are innately immoral. Each role in the play presents a conflicting evil choice and relationship of acceptance with the audience... except Jeffrey. He materializes moral support and a quiet ear for many characters. In fact, many scenes actually sound like a prayer in which Jeffrey just listens. This coincidence, if it is that, may further substantiate his embodiment of a Christ figure.
Another interesting concept Guyton represents in his plays, and particularly this one, is a strained relationship with the matriarch and her concept of order. In Guyton's dramatic play Attic, Mother tries to maintain control with drugs, whereas, in this piece Mom attempts maintenance with advice, cereal, and a clean house. Does Mom embody all that a 1950's society has put on her - cleanliness, caretaker, and non-judgmental confidant? Yes, but in the end, this picture of happiness falls apart as she runs away with an audience member to have an affair in the lobby!
Guyton often shares with the audience an inch of his vision, and allows us to run a mile with it. This poor family is a delicious smorgasbord of immoralities and power struggles, and Guyton allows us to taste the play's themes and then empty the serving dishes, just like Dad's character, with lobby discussions after the show. However, like the despicably loveable characters, at the end of the day, I am willing to let this criticism slide. After all, Guyton may just be presenting a mirror to nature. That large compact forces the audience to look at our own behaviors and make decisions best suited to ourselves. What a smart way to passively scold the public for their own behaviors!
I will say that I have both seen the play and read the script for Where's Julie?, so I have strong opinions of what works on stage versus just reading the play. Both mediums are thought provoking, and laugh-out-loud parodies of what we see in the daily American household. Holding a script in hand allows readers to understand stage directions from the playwright's perspective, and not from a director's interpretation. With that in mind, I would highly suggest reading the play first if you enjoy lighthearted jokes at the expense of human idiosyncrasies, and then viewing Guyton's shows to watch hilarity ensue. To learn more about the author or purchase his scripts, please view his web page at [....]
I recently had the pleasure of working on a production of Daniel Guyton's "Where's Julie?", a relatively obscure comedy about teenage pregnancy, abortion, broken homes and autism, amongst others. The play revolves around the titular Julie, a fifteen-year-old runaway living with her adult sister, who discovers she has become pregnant by her boyfriend, a twenty-two-year-old pothead with a penchant for petty thievery. Crushed under the pressure of an overbearing mother, an abusive father, a mentally deficient younger brother and her only friend, a zealous, naive and morally idealistic Christian, Julie grapples with decisions regarding the direction of her life.
It's not called a melodrama for nothing; "Where's Julie?" is structured as a parody of the typical after-school special, employed swelling musical cues and sappy dialogue spiced with inventive profanity that serves to create a uniquely humorous view on what would normally be taken as very serious issues. The said issues presented are never cheapened or devalued, and this is where Guyton succeeds; under the language and off-color humor is a rich strain of meaningful sentiment. He enables one to laugh at the situation without forgetting its possible real-life repercussions, a key element required of successful black comedy. "Where's Julie?" is able to pull the rug from under the feet of the audience and hit them with moments of staggering sincerity; the confrontation between the father, Harold, and his autistic son, Jeffrey, is one of the most powerful and heartbreaking moments I've ever seen on stage.
While some of Guyton's writing may seem crude, unpolished and leaving something to be desired in the area of craft, the vision underneath shines through as a powerful redemptive quality, leaving a humorous and bittersweet portrait of the fallout of a traditional nuclear family. I would recommend "Where's Julie?" along with Guyton's other plays in a similar vein to those searching for underrated quality comedies geared towards a more mature audience. Guyton delivers.
In the hilarious and thought-provoking play "Where's Julie?" Daniel Guyton has captured something special. At first blush, the crude humor and seemingly thin characters give us something to laugh at—then the twist. The humor and facade are the characters' way of coping with the impossibility of their everyday lives. As the characters struggle against seemingly impossible odds to make sense of the crazy world they (we) live in, they become increasingly complex, eventually smashing the fourth wall and forcing us to engage in the questions they are struggling with. This meta-theatrical funhouse brings an absurdist twist to contemporary issues.
"Having produced this show in Houston, I cannot recommend it higher. 'Where's Julie?" lives in a world that is equal parts melodramatic, experimental, and grounded - a combination that functions perfectly as the show progresses. Audiences have connected so well to the character of Jeff (who brought me to tears), Mom (an at first seemingly 50s housewife who we learn is at the end of her rope), Julie's friend the incredibly unhinged and hilariously pious Margaret, and the sweetly pot headed Hector. In fact, Julie's problems seem increasingly every day as we progress further into this world and find how everyone has their own struggles. I won't spoil the ending, but the twist on reality truly is hilarious and well earned.
We we were very fortunate to be able to share this in Houston and hope it continues to travel the world.
Interesting play to read & would a fun challenge to produce; expensive to purchase relative to size of text & distance it was sent from.
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