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 This play was one of three published one-acts by Stetson alumni,
presented at a Homecoming in celebration of Stetson's one hundredth
season.
Waiting for the Bus is an homage to the absurdist genre of the mid-twentieth
century. It won first place from the national honorary Theta Alpha Phi in
1959, and has received professional productions in Los Angeles and
Off-off-Broadway. According to the playwright, the play is "an allegorical,
theatrical poem," an avant-garde piece in which an elderly couple blend into
the absurd and surreal world they witness while waiting for the bus.
It featured interesting character work in a presentational style, as
three young actors played ancient, barely ambulatory senior citizens, and a
pretty young woman from Jamaica played a 1950s shoe shine boy. Their
collective physical and vocal work, coupled with the play's minimalistic
scenery, was a good example of Brechtian gestus (a full-body
character "mask" with socioeconomic implications) that proved very moving in
the end (although such an emotional response is perhaps not what Brecht
would have advocated). My conceptual approach for this one accentuated a
flavor of circus pantomime, which may have bolstered the "sad clown" feeling
at the end. On the Brechtian side, there was frequent breaking of theatrical
illusion, especially concerning the age of characters (by having them tap
dance, for example, or "stare into the existentialist void" at the
audience).
 Ramon Delgado is a distinguished playwright and professor on
the faculty of Montclair State University in New Jersey. In addition to his
full-length and one-act plays, he also authored an acting textbook and
edited the Best Short Plays series from 1981 to 1989. |
