West of Boston by Con Chapman

ISBN #1-60513-104-0
JAC #2011-0009

The 5:05

• The Conductor (male or female)

• Ted Varley

• Bob

• A woman with a cellular phone

• Mark Watkins

• A nervous man (or woman)

• Dot

• Joy

• A student

• A disheveled man (or woman)

Setting
The interior of a railway car.

WELCOME TO ENDIVE

• The Ballsers, Ronnie and Judy

• A second couple, Truman DeWolfe and Delia (not his wife.)

• A third couple, two women

• *The Hostess/Maitre'd

• *A waiter or waitress

• *The Hostess/Maitre’d may be doubled with the waiter/waitress.

Setting
A small restaurant.

A Note from the Playwright

West of Boston is the title I have given to two related plays, The 5:05 and Welcome to Endive. The two are connected literally in that one character on the train in the first play walks into the restaurant depicted in the second, and in the larger sense by the world they inhabit.

In Welcome to Endive, we meet three couples out for dinner at an upscale restaurant. One couple—a man and a woman—are on the verge of breaking up, but she doesn’t know it yet. Another married couple are dining out because she wants to, although he needs some help breaking out of the mental rut he’s usually in. The third couple—two women—includes a woman who was dumped by cell phone and a friend who’s there to console her. The rejected woman emerges from her funk with the help of her friend, who quickly lays plans to replace the now-departed man.

In The 5:05 a train car full of commuters at the end of the day unwinds and unburdens themselves on the way home. We learn that one man still goes into Boston every day, but not to a job. He’s out of work, and he spends his days looking for work at the last level he occupied before he fell from the ranks of the gainfully employed. An acquaintance commiserates, but not too much. Another man concludes a business deal on the phone, and a woman is dumped by her boyfriend by cell phone; life goes on. Two women—Joy and Dot—discuss the unfairness of their workplace, and concoct a scheme by which they’ll help each other get a bonus, but then get bogged down in an argument over who should make the first sacrifice for the other. A nervous man or woman, a disheveled man or woman and a student—each oblivious in his or her own way to the life lived by the rest of the passengers—are along for the ride as well.

The French have a term—tranche de vie, or “slice of life.” I have tried in these two plays to slice through walls—physical and emotional—to allow you a glimpse into a crowd of characters you may recognize once you get to know them. —Con Chapman

Author Biography
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever, a history of the 1978 Red Sox season, and A View of the Charles, a novel. He has written twenty plays, including the following which have been performed, published or recognized:

The Little Theatre is a one-act play for middle and high school audiences that follows a group of four students as they prepare for a speech and debate tournament. It is published by Eldridge Publishing;

The Undertakers Club is a one-act play for middle and high school audiences about a group of adolescent outcasts who start their own student organization devoted to mortuary science. It was a finalist in the 2003 Jackie White Memorial National Children’s Play Writing Contest and is published by Brooklyn Publishers;

The 5:05 is a one-act depiction of an evening’s run on a Boston commuter train. It received a staged reading as part of the Boston Directors Lab 2003 New Directions Playwright Festival and was a semi-finalist at the 2002 Nantucket Short Play Competition;

The Picket Line, a full-length play about a labor dispute in a small Massachusetts town, received a staged reading by the Manhattan Theatre Cooperative in January of 2005;

The Last Day of the Mai-Tai Novelty Company is a ten-minute play about a foreclosure sale at which an old lady with her eye on a box of stuffed animals gets into a bidding war with a professional bottom-fisher. It was performed as part of Acme Theatre’s 2003 New Works Winter Festival in Maynard, Massachusetts. The Ten-Minute Workshop is a ten-minute play about ten-minute plays. It was performed at the Hovey Players 2003 Summer Shorts Festival and was the favorite comedy of “The Theater Mirror: New England’s Live Theatre Guide.” It was also performed as part of the 2004 “Buffalo Quickies Festival” at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, New York.

Take Out the Trash is a ten-minute play about whom, as between a man and woman who share an apartment, will take out the trash. It was performed as part of the Theatre Collaborative’s 2004 Ritalin Readings and the Arlington Friends of the Drama “Short Takes Festival” in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Fast Nickels, a one-act play about a used car salesman, was performed as part of the New England Academy of Theatre’s 2004 Short & NEAT One Act Play Festival in New Haven, Connecticut.

The Hat Trick, a two-act play, received a staged reading by The New Play House in Frederick, Maryland, in December of 2004.