The January People’s Choice Goes To…..
The people have spoken … The January People’s Choice Award goes to Evan Baughfman for his short play, FAR FROM MAN, presented as a staged reading on Zoom on January 11th. Congratulations, Evan!
Courtesy of Evan Baughfman, we’re pleased to share the first few pages from the award-winning script. Enjoy!
FAR FROM MAN
by Evan Baughfman
Synopsis:
A pair of foxes enjoys a peaceful morning on a sandy beach. Then, a coyote comes along…
Character list:
HURLEY – a red fox pup
FLORA – a red fox; Hurley’s mother
SHRED – a coyote
[This play is inspired by sightings of wild foxes in the sand at Manhattan Beach, California, December 2020]
(Just after dawn. On a beach, in the sand. HURLEY, a red fox pup, builds a sandcastle, patting the structure together with his little paws. His mother, FLORA, sits beside him, staring off into the ocean.)
HURLEY
Mom, look!
(Flora doesn’t respond. She just watches the waves.)
Mom! Look at what I did! Hey, Mom! Mom, what do you think?
(Flora doesn’t look his way, but responds with…)
FLORA
Good job, honey.
HURLEY
You aren’t even looking! Look! Mom! Please! Come onnnnnn!
(Flora finally looks.)
FLORA
Wow. Another sandcastle. It’s lovely.
HURLEY
“Lovely”? Blech. That’s a mom-word. I was thinking “awesomest castle ever”.
FLORA
Your best yet. I’m impressed. Just look at what you’re capable of doing with your own two paws!
HURLEY
It’s so much huger than the one I made yesterday. See? You could fit a whole entire whale in here!
FLORA
Is that right?
HURLEY
Well, a baby whale, at least.
FLORA
I think the baby whale should stay in the water. Far from land. Far from—
HURLEY
“Far from Man.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. You say that every day.
-2-
Evan Baughfman
evanbaughfman@gmail.com
FLORA
Glad you’re listening.
HURLEY
Well, you cram it into my ears so much! “Stay far from Man,” “far from Man,” “far from Man”…All! The! Time!
FLORA
You do you know why you have to build a brand-new sandcastle every morning, don’t you? It’s because, whenever humans crawl out of their dens after we’ve gone, they come across your hard work and tear it apart. That’s what they do to beautiful things: destroy them. That’s what they’d do to you, if you let them get close. It’s what they did to your—
HURLEY
Dad.
FLORA
And your—
HURLEY
Sisters.
FLORA
And I won’t let it happen to—
HURLEY
Me. Are you sure humans ruin my sandcastles? You’ve never seen them do it. I’ve never seen them do it.
FLORA
We’re safe, back at home, by then.
HURLEY
I think it’s the water. It creeps up here really far and takes my castles away.
FLORA
The water wouldn’t…
HURLEY
There’s like a whole city of my castles out there, but we can’t see them. And there’s fish and crabs and other things living all cozy inside of what I built.
FLORA
No. Man destroys. Everything.
(SHRED, a large gray coyote, appears on the other side of Hurley.)
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Join us on February 15th for the next Monday Night PlayGround on Zoom! Click here for more info.