Christmas Plays V
Please may Astronaut Doug and I be excused from the party to go save Christmas? We can’t all be robots like you, Matt. Some of us have this thing called the realness, okay, and it prevents us from being able to deliver genuine performances. But children love you! No they don’t. They expect me. Last year was the first time that parents invoked my name more than their children did. It’s a very… very harmful condition to have to come down from, you know, to come to terms with how shit you are. Four characters and they’re all super depressed, so it’s depressedmass. None of you are saying anything. It just needs. It needs an ending. It has one.

Kraken Play
Once every ten years the Kraken emerges to threaten our way of life. DOUG. DOUG. DOUG. YOU’RE ALIVE. First and foremost I would like to apologise to the crew. Doug I don’t think it was your fault. I let you down. I let everybody down. Lily stop. I have a plan. We can build a boat. Is there nobody who will teach us to craft a vessel? I will answer the call. But you can train for something your whole life and still not be prepared. Lily I believe in you. No boat, ship or ocean craft makes it across the sea due to naval engineering. No, they make it across seas because we believe they will. Is it irresponsible to create theatre out of real life events and then cloak it beneath a thin veil of fiction? 

Christmas Plays IV
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

IMPOSTOR PLAY
Hey Doug I can write good plays can’t I? Surprisingly, yes you can Solomon. They articulate lots about the world. And are they just one idea repeated? No, they have good narrative structure and complicated deep characters. Thank you Doug. I only say it because I mean it. Cheers.

Christmas Plays III
The smell of blood and nutmeg lingers in the air. Matt’s gone and betrayed them, as they knew he would someday. He’s learnt his lines. On a scale of happy to sad, how happy do you think I would be to hear you suggest Father Christmas as a business strategy? Lily lacks the necessary nuance in her writing to stop short of insulting everyone she loves. Don’t you remember the day I went for cigarettes and didn’t come back? Hi Gary! I’ve got an arse tattoo! Cool. Now back to THE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS.  

Crusaders Three (and Matt has Jet Lag)
On the subject of claiming to have achieved, obviously our subjectivities are called into question. I could very well say that ‘on my way, I helped an old lady cross the road’ and however I may try to prove this – photos, testimonials and the like – you still necessarily hold the right to distrust my assertions. That’s fine, but know this. Know the constitutional make-up of a crusader scout and you will know, for them, lying is simply not an option. 

BUNKERPLAY
Squalk squalk, peckety nest peck squalk peck. Where’s the darker side of this? There isn’t one because objects on fire are a mirror image of themselves. Ingredients: 3x plucked ducks – keep the feathers not the duck. If you want to be a pioneer why don’t you make custard out of lightning? I disembowel you and lay my eggs in your carcass. Just Kidding! I love you! And you were all “no hands dad, look no hands” but we were getting handsy as fuck. I’m going to the sun. You want anything? 

Christmas Plays II
I’ve been having reservations about our marriage ever since Julie made lamb and beetroot roulade with goats cheese medallions for the company clam bake. I don’t want it to be the apocawypse! Owwww! Daddy Dougwis, no! When I say jingle you say bells! Jingle (bells!) Jingle (bells!) Please, Wenceslas. I’m dead, you’re dead and now we’re both embarrassed.

Christmas Plays
The name’s Frank Bentley and if I told Bing Crosby what I’m about to tell you, those two Christmas albums would have stayed in the drawer. Everything goes white. Jesus is in front of everyone. He is too attractive. He is about 13. This moment left the two unsure as to what to do next. The feeling – as we will later find out – will assert itself as a recurring motif in the play, not to mention a definitive characteristic of the human condition. This isn’t logistically possible. And, so far, not Christmassy.