Left Bank Waltz (excerpt)

Synopsis:

Ava Ferrage is the most famous actress in the world.  But she doesn’t give interviews.

Esquire Magazine wants one.  They send Tyler.

Ms Ferrage has a cold.

He waits.  She still has a cold.  He waits some more.  The cold shows no signs of abating.  He cannot return to Esquire empty-handed.

Through a variety of subterfuges, he manages to speak to a succession of the people who surround her – her manager, her realtor, her hairdresser, her doctor, her reader, her couturier, her drama coach, the director with whom she’s working and her masseuse.

Each of these people has played a part in her life – some of the parts overlapping, some contradictory, some recent, some going back to the year dot.

And slowly, as he conjures his ‘de facto’ pen portrait, we build up an image of this person – part jigsaw puzzle, part kaleidoscope, part hologram, part missing – and we begin to know what we can only see reflected.

Does he ever get to meet Ms Ferrage?  Has he met her without realizing it?  Do we ever actually ‘meet’ the people we think we know?

In an extraordinary two-hander that strives to capture a sense of what it is to be human, Left Bank Waltz takes us on a journey that is, in unequal parts, funny, profound, moving and unexpected.

Character Breakdown:

The play is a 2-hander: 1 female, 1 male.

LOIS FARNBACH – Manager / DIDI KRAVITS – Realtor / ZOE PATON – Hairdresser / ALBERTA SCHWEITZER – Doctor / VALDA PERROT – Reader /
ODETTE VANDERLIP – Drama coach / MADELEINE BANT – Couturier / JAHN SVENSEN – Director (trouser role) / FABIOLA CUEVAS – Masseuse /
CELESTE – Checkout chick – all one actor.

TYLER  – 40s

Running-time: 95 minutes.

Production History: Not yet produced.

Excerpt available for download for free.