Alan David Perkins
was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, reared in Mobile, Alabama, and currently
lives in New York City. He began life as a classically trained French Horn
player and High School Band Director. His biggest claim to fame while attending
college at the University of Alabama was being chosen to represent the State of
Alabama in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in the Olympic All-American
Marching Band.
Alan began writing plays in 1989, and was a founding member of both Developmental Stages and Theatre on a Limb in New York City. To date he has completed 17 full-length plays, 8 one-act plays, and has received honors from twenty-one national playwriting competitions. Works of Alan's you may have seen include: Theatre Americana's production of Standard Deviation in Altadena, California; Theatre on a Limb's Off-off- Broadway production of King of the Mutants at the New Actor's Workshop in New York City; Parkside Player's production of Crap in Forest Hills, New York; The Williams Lake Studio Theatre's production of Type A in British Columbia, Canada; The Dresser, the Duck, the Deity & the Drum Major, four one-acts also produced Off-off-Broadway by Theatre on a Limb at the Mazur theater in New York City; the Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation's premiere reading of F2F at the Irish Arts Center in New York City, directed by Shari Upbin and featuring Mary Testa and Ron Palillo; The Advantage, produced as part of WBAI's "Shelf Life" series; sketch comedy for the troupes Out on a Limb, Bonner & Company Comedy Connection and the cabaret One Desperate Hour; and sketches for The Bozo Show in Chicago.
But if you haven't seen those, you might have seen his one-act play In God's Country, which has received productions in about a dozen venues around the world including Michigan, Oklahoma, Kentucky, British Columbia, Queens and New York City.
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Alan was seen on stage only twice with the Parkside Players; first as a barrister in Witness for the Prosecution, and second as Inspector Williams in Heaven Can Wait; though he's sat in the pit orchestra for The Fantasticks, It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Once Upon a Mattress, and has functioned as Head Producer for their productions of Beau Jest, Fools, A Few Good Men, The Mousetrap and ...Superman.
Alan is happily married to Miriam Denu, a dynamite New York City Public School teacher (and fine stage actress in her own right). He currently is an unaffiliated E-flat Tenor Horn player, and continues to play French Horn, Tenor Horn and Mellophone in musical organizations and pit bands in and around the New York area. Previously he has been a member of the Jersey City Brass, the Gramercy Brass Orchestra, the Imperial Brass, the Doctors' Orchestral Society, the Brooklyn Camerata, the Queens Symphonic Band, the City of Mobile Symphonic Pops Band and the University of Alabama Million Dollar Band. He enjoys producing community theater for the Parkside Players in Forest Hills, as well as a challenging career as a Network Engineer for a New York law firm. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, an Eagle Scout, a Sinfonian, a Certified Novell Administrator and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.
About Playwriting...
To me, the first rule of playwriting is that it be interesting. All too many
times I've seen or read plays that may be structurally sound or have great
dialogue, but are the most boring things I've ever had to endure. I won't write
anything I wouldn't want to see myself. I've even once been accused of
"horseracing" the plot and skimping on character. A good actor can make a weak
character jump off a page, but a weak story will always lie there.
About This Play...
I've been mulling over this play for a long time. Long before the Internet
became fashionable I used to frequent bulletin board services. It was there I
noticed that the same people would post all the time, and in most cases they
were just lonely. I saw a story there. Then I started to do some research (there
are many books available on finding love online, as well as lots of undercover
work) and it all popped into place.
There's a rhythm to the Internet. There is no spontaneity; everyone has plenty of time to think about what they're going to say. As a result, people either say too much or too little. That became one of the challenges when writing this play -- maintaining that rhythm. The second challenge was to keep things moving. Face it, the play is about 90 minutes long and there is NO physical action. Everybody basically sits there and types. Still, no INTERACTION doesn't mean no REACTION. When the show went up at Queens College, Allison Scott, the director, worked the actors on their own individual characters to the point that, even though they all just sat there, there was so much intensity within each of them that it appeared that the play had tons of action.
The third challenge was appealing to an audience. I had a choice -- go with people who knew the Net or didn't. I chose the latter because the play was about these six people, not the Internet (sorry, no manifestos here). Therefore, I wrote it from the standpoint of the reader (or viewer) knowing very little about the Internet. At Queens College I would beg Allison to let me cut what I saw as tedious explanations, but the audiences not only didn't feel it bogged the script down like I did, but they appreciated it. Nobody got lost.
There's a lot of duality in this play. Everybody has something to hide. Who are these people? What have they got to hide? Why are they hiding behind the Internet? And what's up with Horndog?
In addition, what everyone says isn't necessarily what they mean. During the big "seduction" scene between Plato and Nadine, Plato is reciting text to her that he barely understands. Nadine, on the other hand, perceives this as something completely different. Phyllis just says he's a woman, and everybody immediately accepts this, despite the fact that he does practically nothing to back up his claim.
Finally, each character's online persona is different from who they are offline. Each actor should have a firm grasp of each aspect of their character is and what makes them different. Each character (online and off) should have their own vocal tone, cadence and physicality. They should also be aware of who they are at each individual moment. There is one speech Plato gives when he's E-mailing Nadine when he talks about how much he dislikes people his own age, calling them "selfish and cruel." During the course of that speech he should transform from his online persona to his offline persona. Horndog's changes come quickly, so his need to be very noticeable to the audience.
The ending has undergone a lot of discussion. The debate as to whether it should be "happy" or "dark" has yet to be settled. My inclination is to lean a little more toward reality, making the play a true drama by definition.