By Stephanie Coen
"Do you think we ever really know people?" asks Rachael, the central character in Craig Lucas' play Reckless. The theme of Rachel's question echoes throughout Lucas' writing; below are some excerpts from his work.
BLUE WINDOW
Alice, Norbert, Griever and Emily are at a dinner party thrown by Libby.
ALICE: You have the whole web of connections: how you know Libby and why you're here and what I know about you and what you know about me, but even if you could graph it all out? [. . . .]
NORBERT: Yeah?
ALICE: Even if you could put all the different pieces of the puzzle together, your piece and my piece and -
GRIEVER: Watch it, Al.
ALICE: Right. And what you want and why you say what you say or don't say and what's going on in the kitchen and what you did this afternoon and what I'm going to do when I get home and what he's thinking - even if you could assemble all these little pieces of the puzzle -
GRIEVER: Right.
ALICE: From all the different angles so they all fit together perfectly . . .
EMILY: Uh-huh?
ALICE: You would still have . . . a puzzle.
(No reaction)
I thought that was so brilliant.
© 1984, 1985
STRANGER
Linda and Hush are seated next to each other on an airplane. Hush, who has just been released from prison, has been talking about the Devil.
LINDA: You were saying . . . the Devil is other people not being real. But what if they are and that's precisely the point. They are perfectly real, and what you want, deep down, what you desire and enjoy . . . is their humiliation. (To an unseen passenger) Sorry. (To Hush) My voice gets too loud sometimes, tell me if I'm . . . Okay. I don't know what you were in jail for, and I don't want to know, seriously, I'm serious, I don't want to know. But . . .There are lots of people who have done things who aren't in jail, people do things all the time and hope . . . I've done things. And I'm getting away with them. So far. Knock . . . whatever this is. There's probably not one single bit of wood on this plane.
HUSH: Superstitions are the Devil, too.
LINDA: I seem to . . . have a lot of Devil qualities today, maybe you want to change seats. But I've done things.
© 2003 Craig Lucas
THE SINGING FOREST
Loë, a Holocaust survivor, never told her children, Bertha and Oliver, what happened during the war; trying to spare them the horror she witnessed, she alienated them. This scene comes near the end of the play.
BERTHA: And . . . though I don't hate you anymore, it's funny to say that . . . I don't. I don't hate you. But I don't forgive you either. We were children. We couldn't understand. And you abused us. You were lost. And you took us with you. And we were all lost. You could not have saved your family; we were the ones you could have saved. Your obsession with them covered over your real guilt.
LOË: That is the finest interpretation anyone has ever given me.
BERTHA: Good. But I don't forgive you for that, mother.
LOË: No.
BERTHA: I choose not to . . . is what I mean. You wouldn't expect me to, would you?
OLIVER: Of course she would.
LOË: No.
BERTHA: All right. Then I think we can understand one another.
LOË: I think we always have.
BERTHA: No. But we do now.
LOË: Yes.
BERTHA: And I don't think I necessarily have to forgive you in order to be able to love you.
LOË: No.
© Craig Lucas
PRAYER FOR MY ENEMY
AUSTIN: I don't know any of you people.
MARIANNE: And there at last someone says the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me god.
© Craig Lucas
