The Last Virgin From Las Vegas

By Jack R. Stanley

Slamming doors, near misses and comic mayhem are just the beginning of a honeymoon mix up between the beautiful star of the number one rated TV sitcom, “The Last Virgin From Las Vegas,” her handsome, skirt chasing co-star, and the brides ex-jock bridegroom.

To celebrate the taping of the 200th episode of the TV series, the male lead gave all the women in the cast and crew a garter with a cameo of his face on it. The one he gave to his co-star had an additional very impressive jewel on it. While the bride was packing for her honeymoon she discovered the gift and sent an angry e-mail to her co-star demanding that he take it back before her jealous linebacker found it and took it the wrong way.

Thinking she meant right now, the male co-star shows up at the bride’s honeymoon cabin, an old bootleggers hideout of the jock’s great grandfather which has been turned into a family retreat over the years. Meanwhile, the male co-star’s ditzy wife found out about the garter and decided her husband was having an affair with the bride. She plans her revenge by coming to the honeymoon cabin to be caught having sex with her not-so-willing lawyer.

A long suffering butler, the bride’s sarcastic assistant as well as a mix of other delightful characters all become a part of this visual and joke filled two act play that leaps off the page. Based on a 1920’s Broadway hit by the Neil Simon of his age, Avery Hopwood, this comedy is modernization of the fast paced, fun and games of this farce that’s like “NOISES OFF.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack R. Stanley
• Release date: Nov 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301528424

Jack R. Stanley

Jack R. Stanley is an award winning novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. As an officer and combat photographer in Vietnam he earned the Bronze Star. Yet he says, “When you’re in a firefight and everybody else on both side have guns while you have a camera --- you get to change your pants a lot.” After his military service he received both his M.A. and his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in Radio-TV-Film. His doctoral dissertation was on the long running TV series GUNSMOKE. Stanley also received two of Michigan1s most prestigious creative writing awards, The Hopwood Award, one for a one-act play and the second for a novel. Still married to his gifted high school sweetheart, Stanley’s first academic position was TV Area Head at The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Radio-TV-Film. He later moved to deep-south Texas and the Lower Rio Grande Valley for a challenging position with The University of Texas-Pan American. Here he taught Theatre-TV-Film for 30 years in the Department of Communication serving as Department Chair at U.T.P.A. for 11 years. He did take one year out to work for The University of Alaska Anchorage as a visiting professor. Back in Texas, Stanley directed for stage at The University Theatre, produced and directed fifteen student staffed, cast, and crewed feature films, writing most of the original screenplays. Just a few of his credits are available on IMDB.com. He now lives in the Texas Panhandle where he writes his fiction and runs his blog, www.TheFictionWritersNotebook.com . His webpage is www.jackrstanley.com.

Book preview

THE LAST VIRGIN FROM LAS VEGAS

A Comedy in Two Acts

by

Jack R. Stanley

Based on

Getting Gertie’s Garter

By

Avery Hopwood

© All Rights Reserved

THE LAST VIRGIN FROM LAS VEGAS

Text copyright © 2012 by Jack R. Stanley

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

This screenplay may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in his/her review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, events or localities is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

Credits:

Cover illustration background

iStock illustration by ZlatkoGuzmic

http://www.istockphoto.com/

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thefictionwritersnotebook.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT READING PLAYS

CHARACTERS

THE PLAY

About the Author

Also By The Author

ABOUT READING PLAYS

By Jack R. Stanley

The script of the play is NOT the play. It is the story the play tells with actors on stage with lights, props, and sound. From Sophocles to Shakespeare to Sam Shepard, playwrights have always known that the document they write, the script, is actually a technical form of writing intended for the eyes of theatre professionals working on a production based on their words.

And yet, a good playwright knows that the script should be first of all be a good reading experience for professional script readers, potential producers, directors, and actors. The text is written for these professionals who, hopefully, will combine their talents to mount a production of the script.

Although there have been high school and college courses based on dramatic writing, reading the script is not the same things as seeing the play. In a very real sense, ..the play is the thing – not the script. There always different ways to interpret a script and that’s what makes for different and sometimes profoundly interesting versions of very old scripts.

Still, a well written script will play out in the mind of the reader like the play running in their head but not always. Many a Greek or Roman or even English Restoration period play will not contain the detail needed for the average reader to visualize what’s supposed to be happening. This is the reason there have, over the centuries, been so many versions of Oedipus and Hamlet; each vastly different from the other and yet each ultimately speaking to the modern audience for whom the production was mounted.

The description of the sets, lights, props, actions and sounds (in the script that even contain such things) are often little more than phrases and incomplete sentences, not punctuated correctly, and annotated in a code expected to be interpreted by those who know the code. Think of the difference between a script and a play as the difference between a blueprint and a building.

Simply put, plays are not really meant to be read by the general public. In fact, the version you’ll see here is NOT the professional format but one I call my E-book Readable Stage Play. It’s designed to be (1) easier for e-book readers to handle and (2) to be more accessible to the non-professional theatre reader.

First up is a list of characters. This gives the general age range and sex of the character and perhaps his/her relationship to other characters. A character may have a first and last name, and be called by either or both by other characters, but whenever this character speaks in the play, he/she is always called by the same name. JOHN Thomas will be known to all who read the script simply as JOHN.

You need to understand that the vast majority of plays are written for the proscenium stage, the typical theatre you think of with a curtain across the whole of the acting space except perhaps a lip that extends out to the orchestra pit. The curtain will open and close for each act, sometimes even between scenes. But there are to other major theatre designs – theatre-in-the-round where there are no curtains and a thrust stage which is like proscenium in that there may be a curtain across the very back of the stage but the majority of the acting area is thrust out into the audience which sits on three sides of the thrust.

The parts of the stage, center, left right, up and down are all from the actors point of view, not the audience’s because the script is written for the actor not the audience. Stages used to be slanted up in the back so the audience could see the actors no matter where they stood. This became known as UP STAGE, up the rise and away from the audience. Close to the audience is DOWN STAGE. There’s also STAGE RIGHT, STAGE LEFT and CENTER. So if an actor is suppose to move DOWN STAGE RIGHT, that’s the way it’s written – except the movement may be called a CROSS – (Mark crosses down right to the table and picks up the book.)

The protocol of the stage play is that each scene begins with a Scene location, The TIME explains when the action is to occur, and perhaps, if you’re lucky there will be a SETTING with descriptions which identifies the local in greater detail. Perhaps there’s a scene number, sometimes not. These are the kind of things which also appear in the printed program for the modern play handed out to each audience member as he/she enter the theatre.

The stage directions or actions of the actors could be included in the dialogue or in paragraphs by themselves. These descriptions may well not be the words of the playwright but those of the Stage Manager whose notes become a part of the printed script after the first professional production of a script. In my format they are in upper and lower case and set off within parenthesis. I have capped all ENTRENCES and EXITS. These are the parts of a script any director is free to alter to fit a specific production.

The only part of the script which is sacrosanct is the dialogue. The words of the character, below the characters name, are never to be changed by a director. Of course, in practice, a few words are changed particularly if the sex or age of a character is switched from the cast list at the beginning