P L A Y W R I G H T

BRUCE GRAHAM, the author of a dozen produced plays, including Early One Evening At The Rainbow Bar & Grille, Moon Over The Brewery, Minor Demons, Desperate Affection, Coyote On A Fence, and According to Goldman, spent eight years as playwright-in-residence at the Philadelphia Festival Theater for New Plays. His work has been produced by the George Street Playhouse, the Hudson Guild, the Cincinnati Playhouse and the Northlight Theater, among others. His TV/film credits include Dunston Checks In, Anastasia, the Abbie Hoffman bio-pic Steal This Movie, as well as the Ira Einhorn mini-series Hunt for the Unicorn, which aired this past year on NBC-TV. Graham has won several awards from the Pew Foundation, Theater Association of Pennsylvania, Rockefeller Foundation and the Princess Grace Foundation. Coyote on a Fence, (1998 Rosenthal Prize winner and recipient of several 1999 Barrymore Award nominations) marked his ninth collaboration with director Jim Christy.

  

I M A G I N A R Y   F R I E N D S

An imaginary friend is an invented person, animal, or character that is created. The term usually refers to such characters created by children, but the same phenomenon is occasionally observable in adults. The inventor will act as if the imaginary being is physically present by talking to it and playing with it. If told that the friend is non-existent, the inventor will often retaliate in a defensive manner by stating that the imaginary friend is invisible, or in some cases questioning the vision of the person.

Imaginary friends can serve as an important source of companionship to some children and adults. As an example, clinical psychologists have reported that young children in boarding schools often develop imaginary friends to cope with extreme stress and separation from their family.

According to some psychological theories, children often use their imaginary friends as outlets for expressing desires which they would normally be afraid to engage in or for which they would normally be punished. Proponents of these theories state that it is not uncommon for a child to engage in mischief or wrong-doing and then to blame the crime on their imaginary friend, allowing the child to act out fantasies that they are otherwise restricted from experiencing due to societal constraints. Similarly, psychologists report that children often give their imaginary friends personality traits that they themselves lack: shy children often describe their imaginary friends as playful and outgoing jokesters who are always making them laugh and who are very popular.

According to psychological research, most children dismiss the imaginary friend once they find real ones.

The imaginary friend is a popular theme in literature and films. Examples include the films Drop Dead Fred, Play It Again Sam, and Harvey, in which the imaginary character is a 6’ rabbit.

Author Robert Louis Stevenson explored the idea of both alter-egos and imaginary friends in a number of his works including the following poem:

THE UNSEEN PLAYMATE by Robert Louis Stephenson When children are playing alone on the green, In comes the playmate that never was seen. When children are happy and lonely and good, The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood. Nobody heard him, and nobody saw, His is a picture you never could draw, But he's sure to be present, abroad or at home, When children are happy and playing alone. He lies in the laurels, he runs on the grass, He sings when you tinkle the musical glass; Whene'er you are happy and cannot tell why, The Friend of the Children is sure to be by! He loves to be little, he hates to be big, 'T is he that inhabits the caves that you dig; 'T is he when you play with your soldiers of tin That sides with the Frenchmen and never can win. 'T is he, when at night you go off to your bed, Bids you go to sleep and not trouble your head; For wherever they're lying, in cupboard or shelf, 'T is he will take care of your playthings himself!

 
  

R E F E R E N C E S or… Who and What Are All Those Actors, Movies & Books Mentioned? LAUREN BACALL: Actress known for her husky voice and sultry looks, she became a fashion icon and role model for women in the late 1940s. Today, she is considered a legendary actress. She is best known for being a leading lady in films such “film noir” classics as To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). BRIDE OF FRANKENSTIEN: 1935 sequel to the movie Frankenstein (1931) starring Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester. BETTE DAVIS: Two-time Academy Award-winning American actress of film, television and theatre. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were romantic dramas. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading actresses, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She was the first actress to receive ten Academy Award nominations and the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her films include Jezebel (1938), Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1941), The Little Foxes (1941), Now Voyager (1942), A Stolen Life (1946) and All About Eve (1950). DONNA REED: Actress best remembered for her roles as the wholesome housewife "Donna Stone" on television's The Donna Reed Show and as "Mary Bailey" in Frank Capra's film, It's a Wonderful Life (1946). She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film From Here to Eternity (1953). GONE WITH THE WIND: 1939 film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name. The epic, set in the American South in and around the time of the Civil War, starred Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland. It told the story of the Civil War from a white Southern point of view. It was awarded ten Academy Awards, a record that would stand for years. It has been named by the American Film Institute as number four among the top 100 American films of all time. It has sold more tickets than any other film in history. Today it is considered one of the most popular films of all time, and one of the most enduring symbols of the golden age of Hollywood. THE GREAT GATSBY: A novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, the story is set in Long Island and New York City during the summer of 1922. The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to increases in organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it. The Great Gatsby was not popular upon initial printing, selling fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life. After it was republished in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership, and is now often regarded as the Great American Novel. AL JOLSON: Highly acclaimed American singer, comedian. Al Jolson was the first popular singer to make a spectacular "event" out of singing a song. Prior to Jolson, popular singers would stand still with only very minimal gesturing as they sang. Jolson, in comparison, had tremendous energy displayed in his performances by way of dynamic gestures and other physical movement. He is most remembered for his performance of the song “Mammy” in which he’d sing on bended knee with his arms outstretched. He is also known for his work in the film The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences. Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of the "talkies" and the decline of the silent film era. LITTLE WOMEN: A novel published in 1868 and written by American author Louisa May Alcott. The story concerns the lives and loves of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. It was based on Alcott's own experiences as a child in Germantown, Pennsylvania with her three sisters, Anna, May, and Elizabeth. NANCY DREW: A fictional, independent-minded, teenager and girl detective of popular mystery series. The Nancy Drew books have been in print continuously since 1930. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD: An American film released in 1938 and directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. Filmed in Technicolor, the picture starred Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains. ROY ROGERS: A singer and cowboy actor. He and his wife Dale Evans, his golden palomino Trigger, and his German shepherd, Bullet, were featured in over one hundred movies and The Roy Rogers Show. The show ran on radio for nine years before moving to television from 1951 through 1957. Roy's nickname was "King of the Cowboys". Dale's nickname was "Queen of the West." For many Americans (and non- Americans), he was the embodiment of the all-American hero. SHOGUN: The first novel (chronologically speaking) in James Clavell's Asian Saga. It is set in feudal Japan somewhere around the year 1600 and gives a highly fictionalized account of the rise of Tokugawa Ieyasu (here labelled "Toranaga") to the Shogunate, seen through the eyes of an English sailor whose fictional heroics are loosely based on William Adams' exploits. TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT: A 1944 thriller romance war adventure film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that is nominally based on the novel To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway. This was Lauren Bacall's first film, at the age of 19, and she became famous overnight for her delivery of the line “You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”