About The Ronald And Other Plays

The Ronald And Oth­er Plays includes a full-length polit­i­cal satire and five one-act plays:

• The Ronald
• The Clean-Shaven Sec­re­tary with the Pis­tol
• Dark and Stormy Night
• Front Page Above the Fold
• Micro­brew
• Kansas City This is For­mer Air Force One
  

ROYALTY-FREE: All of the plays in this col­lec­tion, includ­ing the polit­i­cal satire The Ronald, may be per­formed roy­al­ty-free by ama­teur the­atre com­pa­nies (high schools, col­leges and com­mu­ni­ty the­atre groups).

If you’re an ama­teur the­atre com­pa­ny and would like to per­form one of the plays in this book, con­tact Chris.

Buy: Ama­zon

 

Summary of The Ronald

“Fab­u­lous­ly Cau­casian” bil­lion­aire The Ronald decides to run for Pres­i­dent of the Incor­po­rat­ed States of Free­dom­land. Aid­ing him in his quest are his sexy genius daugh­ter, his accoun­tant, a con­ser­v­a­tive pro­fes­sor, a Broad­way pro­duc­er, his idiot sons, a TV enter­tain­ment reporter, a piz­za deliv­ery­boy, and the Cork Brothers—a pair of 1,000-year-old vam­pires.

The play presents a behind-the-scenes look at a cal­cu­lat­ing narcissist’s Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, from his deci­sion to run, to the months lead­ing up to the elec­tion, to the day before he takes office.

If you’re an ama­teur the­atre com­pa­ny and would like to per­form one of the plays in this book, con­tact Chris.

 

A Short Scene from The Ronald

In the fol­low­ing scene, The Ronald is dis­cussing his idea of run­ning for Pres­i­dent of the Incor­po­rat­ed States of Free­dom­land with his long­time trust­ed advi­sor, Har­vey:

Har­vey. Wait a sec­ond. Are you say­ing The Ronald is going to run for Pres­i­dent? I hate to break it to you, T.R., but…you don’t have any polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence. I mean none. Not even a school board.

The Ronald. That doesn’t mat­ter, Harv. In fact, right now my lack of polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence is a major asset. Peo­ple are tired of the grid­lock, tired of feed­ing and fly­ing around those soft do-noth­ings, those losers. All of those Repub­li­tar­i­an clowns, Harv. They’re all losers. I mean look at that fat fudge­ball from…what state is he from?  Oh, to hell with it, doesn’t mat­ter. Point is, he’s a fat los­er. Looks like the before pic­ture in a weight loss com­mer­cial. Hold on, I want to get Augusti­na up here.

[The Ronald walks over to the gold tele­phone on the desk and dials a num­ber. The Shoeshine Man scrab­bles after him.]

The Ronald [speak­ing into phone]. Get up here, Princess. And bring those new blue­prints. [He hangs up and returns to the putting green.] They’re all losers, Harv. They can’t win. But I can. Know why, Harv?

Har­vey. Because you’re a win­ner?

The Ronald. Exact­ly. I’m a win­ner, I know how to win. And do you know how you win, Harv?

Har­vey. No, T.R. How?

The Ronald. You lie. You lie and you keep lying, and when some­body says you’re lying, you turn it around and say they’re lying, that they’re part of a con­spir­a­cy by the media. It’s like Adolf said, “It is not truth that mat­ters, but vic­to­ry.” Win­ning. The only thing that mat­ters is win­ning. There’ll be plen­ty of time for the truth once we win. But we have to win first. And to do that, we need a Big Lie, some­thing—

Har­vey. Hold it, T.R. Remem­ber that arti­cle about you that came out a while back?

The Ronald. There have been so many, Harv. Which one?

Har­vey. The inter­view with your fifth wife, who said you kept Hitler’s Mein Kampf and a book of his speech­es by your bed?

The Ronald. Yeah, what about it?

Har­vey. You said you didn’t have those books.

The Ronald. Nooo, Harv. What I said was, quote, “If I had those books, and I’m not say­ing that I do, I would nev­er read them.” Unquote.

Har­vey. But…clearly you have read them, T.R.

The Ronald. No, I haven’t, Harv. When you came up here ear­li­er, did you pass a man get­ting off the ele­va­tor?

Har­vey. I did. Who is he?

The Ronald. An Ivy League pro­fes­sor. Great guy. Hired him thir­ty years ago, when he was just a strug­gling grad stu­dent, hired him to be my per­son­al read­er. For thir­ty years he’s been com­ing in once a month. He talks to me for an hour and gives me sum­maries of great books. Look, he gave me this…

 

The Story Behind The Ronald

From the Pref­ace:

As for what inspired The Ronald, that is a sto­ry all its own.

One morn­ing short­ly after the 2016 U.S. Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion, I awoke with a vision of how Don­ald Trump had won the Pres­i­den­cy. His strat­e­gy, his tac­tics, how he per­suad­ed the elec­torate, how he gamed the media—it had all come to me in a dream. It was a mirac­u­lous moment of Gestalt.

Con­trary to what many read­ers might think, these moments of divine inspi­ra­tion are extreme­ly rare for us writ­ers. So, when a book (or in this case, my first full-length play) comes to us ful­ly formed, we have to drop every­thing and write down the sto­ry unfold­ing with­in us. In my case, I’ve had short sto­ries, arti­cles and poems come to me overnight, which I wrote down in the course of a few hours, and which required very lit­tle edit­ing after­wards; but I’ve nev­er had a long work sim­ply giv­en to me the way The Ronald was. I didn’t write it so much as it wrote itself through me; I sensed this sto­ry float­ing in the col­lec­tive uncon­scious, and it chose me to draw it out of the ether and bring it to fruition.

Two weeks lat­er, the first draft of The Ronald was fin­ished. I put the play in a draw­er and returned to my nov­el-in-progress. When I took The Ronald out again a month lat­er to reread it, I found it need­ed very lit­tle revi­sion. The com­plet­ed play appears here almost ver­ba­tim to the ver­sion that emerged from me dur­ing those two weeks of intense writ­ing in Novem­ber 2016.

 

Summaries of the Other Plays in the Collection

In addi­tion to The Ronald, there are five one-act plays in the col­lec­tion, all of which, except The Clean-Shaven Sec­re­tary with the Pis­tol, have been per­formed for the­ater-going audi­ences:

The Clean-Shaven Sec­re­tary with the Pis­tol: What hap­pens when a the­atre com­pa­ny attempts to stage a short peri­od dra­ma, and the pro­duc­ers decide, with­out warn­ing, to insert a com­mer­cial break?

Dark and Stormy Night: An autumn night, a des­o­late din­er, and a lone­ly, beau­ti­ful wait­ress. Enter a man dressed like an L.L. Bean mod­el and car­ry­ing a split­ting maul. Is he a mur­der­er or her roman­tic sal­va­tion?

Front Page Above the Fold: At a local city dai­ly news­pa­per, com­pe­ti­tion between reporters for the front page sto­ry is fierce. So fierce, it’s per­son­al.

Micro­brew: Two 20-some­thing slack­ers live above grand­ma June, but they aren’t get­ting any­thing past her. What she isn’t pre­pared for, how­ev­er, is her grandson’s bewitch­ing home­made beer.

Kansas City This is For­mer Air Force One: August 9, 1974–the day Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon resigned his office. Oh, to be a fly on the wall dur­ing his flight home! But wait…in this play, you are.

 

Royalty-Free Performance Rights for Amateur Theatre Companies

All of the plays in this col­lec­tion, includ­ing the polit­i­cal satire The Ronald, may be per­formed roy­al­ty-free by ama­teur the­atre com­pa­nies (high schools, col­leges and com­mu­ni­ty the­atre groups).

By mak­ing all of the plays in this col­lec­tion avail­able roy­al­ty-free, I’m hop­ing to have them reach as wide an audi­ence as pos­si­ble. A por­tion of the pro­ceeds from the sale of this ebook or print­ed book will be donat­ed to char­i­ties.

If you’re an ama­teur the­atre com­pa­ny and would like to per­form one of the plays in this book, con­tact Chris.

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