The Unwed Widow

By Jack R. Stanley

Ann Kidd won the lotto with two other young teachers and took a around-the-world cruise. In the Maldives Islands off India, she met, fell in love with and married her soul made. But before the honeymoon was over, her husband was drowned in a scuba accident. At least that’s the story she tells everyone.

When she returns to the Western hemisphere after grieving two months on a private yacht in the Mediterranean to escape the media, she goes to Brenda Cruz’s private beach resort in the Caribbean. Here Brenda is gathering for her yearly group of “Scandal Survivors.”

One of the newest members is a young TV actor, Travis Masterson, who has just been the focus of the media for a supposed “sexcapade” with his current girlfriend, Echo. What only Travis and Ann know is that he is her very much alive husband.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack R. Stanley
• Release date: Jan 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301759675

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 UNWED WIDOW

A Comedy in Two Acts

by

Jack R. Stanley

Inspired by

Nobody’s Widow

By

Avery Hopwood

© All Rights Reserved

THE UNWED WIDOW

Text copyright © 2013 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 gimbat

[e-mail]

www.thefictionwritersnotebook.com

www.jackrstanley.com

WHAT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT READING PLAYS

By Jack R. Stanley

Plays are not meant to be read by the general public. A script is actually a technical document intended for the eyes of professionals working in the theatre only. The text is written for the actors, designers, and director who will combine their talents to mount a production of the script. The description of the sets, lights, props, actions and sounds are often written 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.

In a very real sense, ..the play’s the thing – not the script. The script alone does not have the magic of a staged production and was written only to imply some of the production possibilities. Clipped descriptions, abbreviations, and lack of detail are characteristic of a script. The words on the page are not always as dynamic, colorful, or even emotional as they might be were the story being told in a novel or short story.

The protocol of the theatre is that anything in parenthesis, stage directions, descriptions of characters, costumes, sets, and props, may all be altered as long as the actors stays true to the original dialogue. This explains modernizations and drastic re-stagings of famous plays that still ring true to the original.

All directions, R (right) and L (left) are Stage Right and Stage Left, or left and right from the actors perspective facing the audience, not from the audience point of view watching the performance. Thus when something is indicated to be R it is really to the left and L would be right as the reader might imagine seeing the play. C is Center Stage and obviously the same from either perspective.

In some earlier periods, the stage used to be raked or slanted with the lower portion being toward the audience and the upper portion being the back of the stage, away from the audience. So when something or someone is to be U they are to be Up Stage and D is Down Stage. The action and description in the script might indicate that some object or person is to be above or below something or someone else (C D or R U). Unless there’s an indication that the set is on multiple levels, above and below usually refer to Up Stage and Down Stage of the point of reference.

Most scripts are also written for a proscenium stage where the audience is all out in front of the stage as opposed to being in-the-round or thrust (part of the stage extending beyond the curtain line into the audience like a wide runway.

An X means cross or move from one position on the stage to another. Part of the set, French doors, for example, might be called F.W. for French Windows.

OFF implies that the dialogue, sound, character, or location is not on stage but is, instead, Off Stage and not to be seen. OFF R would be Off Stage to the Right.

ASIDE is a line a character says mostly for the audience’s benefit but is often said as if the character is talking to himself and no one else on stage is supposed to be able to hear the line.

It is only through the understanding of the code and the collaboration of many artists that a script comes to life and becomes the play that touches and moves an audience.

(NOTE: In this script minor editorial corrections or additions for the sake of clarity appear in BOLD and ITALICS.)

THE UNWED WIDOW

Cast of Characters

VIC …………………..40's, wealthy, bored, in love w/ Brenda

JONATHAN …………60's, majordomo for BRENDA, steady as a marble pillar

BRENDA …….………Early 40's, rich, flirtatious, engaged to Vic

DANIELLE ………….Mid 30's, pretty, intelligent, very self assured

OMAR Saldana ……...50, stylish, former film actor and TV game show host

TRAVIS Masterson ....Late 20's, TV action/adventure star

ANN …….……………Mid 20’s, attractive, quick wit & temper

ACT I

SCENE 1

SETTING:

The Main Room of Brenda’s Caribbean island resort home. Across the back of the set windows/glass doors look out on a wooden deck, green island hills, and the ocean beyond. At one end of the deck is a practical, recessed rinse-shower. A shelf with towels and hooks with fresh bathrobes is just inside the main room from the shower. A front door, down stage left, opens to the driveway. Stairs to the second floor, stage left, pause for a landing halfway up to archway at the top. This archway leads to an unseen hallway and unseen bedrooms looking out on the ocean. Upstage center is a game table with four chairs. Up stage right is a couch with coffee table flanked by a pair of easy chairs. Downstage right is a bar with three stools. A hallway, stage right, leads off to the rest of the house. There are fresh flowers everywhere around the room.

AT RISE:

AT RISE we discover VIC, 40's, big, loveable and comfortable with himself, dressed in upscale beach casual slacks, shirt, and sandals snoring lightly as he is stretched out on the couch. On the deck with their backs to us are BRENDA Cruz, mid 40's, multiple times divorced, good hearted but suspicious and protective of others; DANIELLE, mid 30's, pretty, intelligent, an airline heiress, and OMAR, 50's, a living example of the cool, suave, older man girls have always been warned about by their mothers but with a twinkle. Brenda studies the bay below through binoculars