Paul David Young
Workspace: Current Session
Paul David Young won the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award. He has been produced at MoMA PS1, Marlborough Gallery, the Living Theatre, Lion Theatre, Kraine Theater and the Red Room, and at the Kaffileikhusid in Reykjavik. The Kerr Fellow at the Millay Colony, the Pearlman Fellow at Djerassi, and a Fulbright Scholar in Germany, he graduated from Yale College, Columbia Law School, and New School for Drama. His In the Summer Pavilion premiered in 2011 (Critic’s Pick, “a deceptively quiet winner”: Backstage.com; “a perfect little play”: NYTheatre.com; “achy, richly observant story,” a “gem”: NY Daily News; a “highlight” of the NY Fringe: Village Voice) and will be produced in October 2012 at 59e59 Theaters. He is a Contributing Editor at PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press) and writes for Art in America. His translation, with Carl Weber, of Heiner Müller’s Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome will be published in 2012.
Excerpt from In the Summer Pavilion by Paul David Young ©:
NABILE:
You’re moving out of your place?
BEN:
I don’t need it anymore.
CLARISSA:
You just moved in there. You don’t like it?
BEN:
I don’t need it.
CLARISSA:
Have you talked to your shrink about this?
BEN:
I don’t need her either.
CLARISSA:
Ben, she’s been really good for you. She helped you get clean.
BEN:
And now that I’m clean I’m going to do something with my life.
NABILE:
Fantastic. What are you thinking about?
BEN:
I’m not thinking. I know. I met this girl, Theresa, when I was in rehab. We talked. In rehab, you talk and talk. It’s all you do. Talk and think about your life. Why you’re using and then what else is there, what do you do with the time you have on Earth. Since we graduated from Princeton, what have I done? I was hooked on coke and then I switched to heroin. I’ve never had a job. I’ve never had a relationship. I’ve done nothing with my life. Nothing.
NABILE:
This is heavy. I think I need more coffee.
CLARISSA:
Sorry, Ben, would you like some?
BEN:
I don’t drink coffee anymore.
NABILE:
I’m still on it. Clarissa?
CLARISSA:
No, thanks. You used to be Mister Espresso.
BEN:
It’s a drug. It’s like heroin. You get to where you need it just to be normal. I don’t want any of that.
CLARISSA:
You’ve made a lot of progress.
BEN:
And it’s wrong.
CLARISSA:
Wrong?
BEN:
Coffee is made on the backs of peasants. They plant, they pick. They do all the work and they’re practically living in slavery. The societies of South America are essentially still feudal. The landowners and the large multinationals control the agriculture and make all the profits by exploiting landless peasants who aren’t politically organized. Most of the time the plantation owners own the police and the military. The workers can’t stand up for their rights. They live in substandard conditions, deprived of adequate health care. Their children don’t have access to education. It’s all a process of exploitation and I don’t want to be a part of it. I can’t support it. It’s morally and ethically wrong.
BEN:
It’s not just coffee.
CLARISSA:
What else?
BEN:
The apartment.
NABILE:
It’s wrong to have a place to live?
BEN:
Private property is where it begins, the whole system of capitalist oppression, the dominance of the media and information systems by the ruling classes, the internet.
CLARISSA:
The internet?
BEN:
The internet and all electronic media are essentially a complete system of surveillance and we are all complicit in it. I don’t use the computer or the cell phone.
NABILE:
You’re going to rely on the post office?
BEN:
I’m relying on the human network. I’m going off the grid.
CLARISSA:
Who is this Theresa?
