About the Playwright:
About the playwright:
B.A. Hite is Barbara Allen Hite, accomplished writer, teacher and Theatre Arts professional. Her Honors’ degrees from Mary Baldwin College and Johns Hopkins University, led to a long career in secondary and college teaching. She currently shares her talents at Tidewater Community College in Virginia.
Drawing on her droll observations of life, Bobbi began a prolific playwriting career over four decades ago. She earned Playwriting Fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and has won The Stanley Drama Award as well as the ACE New Plays Contest. Her full-length and one act plays have enjoyed numerous staged readings and productions.
A Chair
A Senior Comedy
By B. A. Hite
About the Play:
ABOUT THE PLAY:
An older couple is considering renting an apartment occupied by a “famous” person recently deceased. When the woman finds an old chair she thinks it may have been “his” and therefore, special. Her husband begins to reflect on his own life, wondering what has been special for him. Together, they move to a new place.
CHARACTERS:
MATTIE, a woman of Irish Catholic background, in her sixties.
JACKSON, her husband, in his sixties.
SCENE:
The living room of an empty apartment for rent. Doors lead to
the main hall and the rest of the apartment.
TIME:
The present.
FROM THE PLAY:
JACK: It seems to me, Matt, that these are the inclinations of an adolescent mind at work: “This is it. This is the very place of fame.” And you talk of museums and you talk of mementos. If you were to look around and you could tell me, word for word, what’s so spectacular about this place, now, what would you say? Word for word?
MATTIE: Not spectacular, Jack. I never said spectacular. I’d expect just the opposite if I expected anything at all. A quiet dignity, Jack.
JACK: Oh, yes, very quiet.
MATTIE: That’d be my expectation.
JACK: Very hidden. Into the walls, it is.
MATTIE: Well, I feel it.
JACK: What do you have here? Some famous man’s rooms looking for all their life just like your ordinary set of rooms’d look to any bystander. I see nothing famous looking about this room.
MATTIE: (Hushed of voice again.) It’s the feeling you get.
JACK: The feeling, is it?
MATTIE: Of the presence.
JACK: Oh, the presence you’re talking about.
MATTIE: It’s the spirit, too, wafting about in the air of him being here.
JACK: A draft, is that it?
MATTIE: There’s a certain number of vibrations pitching forward here and there.
JACK: Ho no, ho no no no, Mattie. Hold up a minute.
MATTIE: Yes. Vibrations.
