Author’s Introduction:

Judy Klass

The seeds for this play were probably planted during several of the last election cycles. Election 2000 scared me because not only did Gore win the popular vote by half a million votes, meaning that if we were a democracy he would have taken office, but he also won Florida if you count ballots where the voter’s intention was clear: over-votes with the same name punched out and written on a line. (Voters were only supposed to indicate their vote in one of those ways.) And that was in spite of the purging of voting rosters of black voters, and other dirty tricks, in Florida. And Scalia’s sons were working for Bush, so Scalia should have recused himself . . . and the whole thing kind of stank to high heaven. And most people and the major media didn’t seem to really notice or mind; they seemed eager to sweep all these details and chads under the rug, though the rest of Planet Earth were laughing at us. And W went to Europe soon after taking office and lectured all the heads of state in Europe, who had actually been democratically elected, about democracy in this prissy, patronizing way – and it was just embarrassing.

As the election of 2004 approached, I felt uneasy because of reports of problems with the easily-hacked voting machines with no paper trail, manufactured by Diebold and other Republican-owned companies. I thought: no one in the US could steal an election from a candidate who was clearly ahead in the polls; we wouldn’t stand for it. But Kerry is like Gore, patrician, stiff and unappealing, and like Gore, even if he’s ahead, it might only be by a razor-thin margin, and if that’s the case, these voting machines might throw the election to W once again. I’d actually lie awake worrying about this – not only about another four years of W, but about our electoral process being further debased in this way – and then I’d soothe myself to sleep by reminding myself that the media conducted exit polls, and they could serve as a failsafe mechanism. In the middle of Election Day 2004, the major media announced that they were adjusting their exit polls because the exit polls showed Kerry ahead, but the voting machine tallies showed W ahead. And I thought: sigh. So much for the failsafe mechanism. I live in Tennessee now, and every time I vote, on an electronic machine that prints no record, I find it unsettling. I preferred the bulky, ancient machines we had in NYC, with metal toggles to flip and a big lever to pull, but I understand that those are gone now, as well.

All of that accounts for the wide-eyed conspiracy theory/nut-job aspect of the play. This play also comes out of my sense that Sophocles is The Man, when it comes to inventing so much that is important in playwriting: the underlying conflict in personalities between two characters who argue and who are, in a sense, both right; the hero or heroine whom we admire or identify with, though his or her flaws are plain; the sense of how personal and arbitrary the ways of power and politics can be; the weaving together of a sense of irony and destiny and inevitability with the very character arcs of a piece . . . Teaching Oedipus Rex and Antigone to college students, and looking at adaptations of Antigone that have been done in the past, probably led me to a sense that I’d like to take a crack at it myself.

So, here’s my play Ismene’s Press Conference. Enjoy

Download a PDF of the play here: Ismene’s Press Conference

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Twenty-two of Judy Klass’ one-act plays have been produced, all over the country, and two of her full-length plays have gone up in New York City. Her unproduced full-length play Stop Me if You’ve Heard this One won the Dorothy Silver Award in 2006. Her full-length play Cell was produced in 2008 in the International Mystery Writers’ Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky. In 2009 it was one of three plays nationwide to be nominated for an Edgar. It is published by Samuel French.

Whichever way you slice it, four middle aged men singing anything with ‘sex’ in the title, while thrusting at the audience is never less than embarrassing.

Even when including the cute, curly haired one at the front.

Justin Timberlake won’t get away with it for long, despite having a bank of cute, curly haired moments to fall back on. And some slightly less cute moments. Still, that doesn’t stop four men who really should know better, in Glee. The fact that they don’t makes for one of many hilarious, astounding, and tear-your-eyes-out awful musical numbers, set in a hyper-real, acidly cruel high school. For the uninitiated, Glee is High School Musical now with added irony and colour.

Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), a faded high school hero, curly hair intact, teaches Spanish to bored teenagers, yearns to relive the glory days and revive the glee club of the title. A show choir outfit once the pride of the school and a much needed boost to his self esteem, pulped each day without mercy by his wife and his students.

As a lifetime of High School Movies teaches, the American school system can turn everything, even the limpest, least muscular of solitary skills, like spelling, or algebra, into a competitive sport. To that end, Will scrapes together a ragged team of misfit students:

Rachel (Lea Michele) – a perky, chronic overachiever aiming for Broadway, child of loving, attentive fathers. She’s an exhausting amalgam of Tracy Flick, a young Barbra Streisand and Lisa Simpson. As such, she just about remains in character when making public service type pronouncements like her lecture to the toxic abstinence club on managing randy teens with preparation, not moderation.

Finn (Cory Monteith) – a good-natured, if none too bright football team meathead who just wants two things; to consummate his relationship with his blonde mean-girlfriend (Dianna Agron) and sing his little heart out.

Finn and Rachel are clearly meant to be the stars here: Nice clean-cut kids who like to lead the way, with a trail of sickly sweet breadcrumbs laid for the viewer. But, just before things threaten to get too Disney and soft focus, Glee throws in a sticky, adults-only humiliation for our songbirds.

Mercedes (Amber Riley) – one of Glee’s Token Minority Contingent, which includes Gay Kid (Chris Colfer) and Wheelchair Kid (Kevin McHale). Glee makes a knowing reference to its dutifully diverse, yet empty casting by having the angry emo girl tag her fellow Glee member as ‘other Asian kid’. She ticks the overweight and non-white boxes; she’s lonely but can belt out a tune with the best of ‘em. As the series progresses, I’m hoping she and the others can grow into properly fleshed out roles, rather than archetypes with little or no function beyond backing vocals.

Will pits his singers against a slick, professional looking set from another, more prosperous school and earns the wrath of cheerleader coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch being terrifying with minimal effort) when the club’s accidental successes nibble at her precious annual budget. But, Will’s got bigger problems, like his brittle, selfish wife, her pregnancy and his obvious and much requited attraction to neurotic guidance counsellor Emma (Jayma Mays, Heroes).

In addition to her ruthless squad, Sue’s also armed with some of the juiciest one-liners of the series so far, always delivered with relish and the uneasy feeling that she might chew off an arm or go into a post-traumatic, battle-induced meltdown. The best exchanges have Will and Sue vying for notice and funding from the school’s cheerfully venal principal.

Glee combines fluffy escapism with a surprisingly topical comment on an America scrabbling up from its knees following a biting recession; money, or lack of it is ever present. The school struggles to keep to a straining budget in a no account town most of the kids will never leave. Will works himself into the ground to deliver the lifestyle his wife demands. The boys suffer for their lack of ambition and find themselves older sugar mommies willing to do a little ego stroking, while the girls look for ‘financial security’.

The tendency of characters to burst into a big production number at moments of stress or high emotion might grate on anyone but die hard musical theatre nerds, but as a nerd of many, clashing stripes I’m embracing the embarrassment. Glee will slap you round the chops with its enthusiasm and cartoon palate until you do the same, might as well give in and enjoy.