Giving The Game Away

[Roland Goodbody]

Partly autobiographical and then stretched quite a bit, "Giving The Game Away" was a way of getting at the magic of imagination and the pitfalls of self-involvement. Well, that seems to me now what I wrote, but it's not as if I set out to do that. I just had to get some things off my chest, the delightful as well as the sad, hence the double meaning of the title. In a way, it was a sort of coming out of the closet, an admission of a nerdy nuttiness or what then seemed worse and kind of worried me, a creeping insanity. Until I brought it out into the light of day in a form that I could share with others without feeling shameful, that is. The reaction I got from audiences that pleased me the most, and which came as a surprise to me, was how the guy in the piece reveals a vulnerability, a desire for connection but a cluelessness about how to sustain it.

[Barry Lane]

Thanks for posting this, Roland. Can't wait to read it again. See if you can get Gerry Duffy to sign on too.

[Barry Lane]

Roland,

I just read your play again. It is a really powerful and complex play. In some ways it is about a man who uses this fantasy football league to keep alive his creative childlike imagination, on the other hand it is about this pathetic lonely loser guy who really had no clue about intimacy with anything else than the works of his own imagination. He is a kind of Walter Mitty whose secret life gives him strength,perhaps largely because it is secret. What happens when you give the game away? I am not sure about the ending of the play but not sure it could end any other way. In other words, I am quite sure his wife will never get it but also sure he will never quite figure out that his wife will never get it. He is stuck in his head and happy to lie to himself and the audience. (not really a lie because he can't fathom a different life). He is forever ,what they call in English class, an unreliable narrator.
For this character to grow he might have to be in a larger play, one that included more points of view. He is like a seedling trapped in a little pot. I wonder what would happen if there were other characters who pushed him into the REAL world. His wife might be that character. He might have to discover that she has real emotional needs that demand something from him. The REAL Game is not a Game, to give that away might require him to stretch himself beyond his world and we might find out where his games originated. I sense they are more a survival tool and coping mechanism than anything else. Perhaps something truly uncontrollable and sad lies beneath.

This play is fine as is, but you could really use this complex character as a jumping off point to a larger work.

That's my 2 cents, buddy.

[Bruce Ballenger]

Sounds like a wonderful book, Roland. I how you're doing well.

B

[Barry Lane]

Roland,

Post the Magical Mystery tour play!