Playwright’s Notes
“Winner By Submission” came about by a series of conversations between Peter Rusin, Mike Fisher, and me over the last 5 or 6 years.
Peter Rusin is the founder and Executive Director of Health World, an organization committed to teaching young people about health and healthy choices. Mike is an educator and director of a troupe of actors. And I am a playwright.
I wrote the play about a cluster of topics we three had kicked around—teen drinking, date rape, violence–and Mike’s troupe took up the cause with unqualified enthusiasm. They threw themselves into the play headlong having no experience in the dark world they were about to enter. They portrayed the worst human instincts and motives. Why go to this dark place? This is a drama that takes place every single day in the real world. It’s about young men caught up in a fantasy that has dangerous, even fatal, consequences for their victim. We conjure those dark emotions in order to purge them. We are guided by our credo: Theatre can heal, theatre can change a life.
We live in a culture that often exploits young people at a time when they are most vulnerable, when monumental changes are taking place in their lives. Our culture has few formal rites of passage that guide a young person from childhood to adulthood. The American Indains have vision quest, there is bar- and batmitzvah and baptism in the Jewish and Christian traditions, but for those who swim in the swift flowing river of American culture, amid the movies and the music and the ads that urge young people to follow their heart, seek their bliss, go with the flow, let it all hang out, just do it, etc. all kids are at risk. Parents do what they can, but the task of protecting youth is overwhelming. “USA Today” conducted a survey some ten years ago asking young people, “What is today’s rite of passage to adulthood?” The answer was almost universal: Car keys and alcohol. It is well-established that when young people lack a formal rite of passage, they make up their own. That being the world we live in, we want to look at the social consequences of risky behavior in dramatic terms. We don’t believe we have the answers, but we do believe we may be able to arrange actors on the stage, give them some poignant dialogue, all of which might lead to a discussion that could eventually lead to an answer.
This is a work in progress. We hope to hear about your production and learn from it. You may find this script rewritten or tweaked over the next six months.
Wm. Mastrosimone
3 March 2010