Allison Page, feeding you some low-hanging fruit- just like these producers!
MAN 1: Okay, how about something with one of those other politics guys?
MAN 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah I like that.
MAN 3: The guy with the tub! The tub guy!
WOMAN: Taft? What’s the twist? We need a twist.
MAN 3: We cast someone really buff, but not overly muscular, so he’s also kind of svelte. Or a model.
MAN 1: GET ASHTON KUTCHER ON THE PHONE.
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MAN 3: A splashy musical spectacular in the traditional sense — chorus girls and everything — about HARRIET TUBMAN! Except the woman who plays her, and stay with me here, is a white male! Think of the PRESS!
MAN 1: Mmm, sounds too expensive. Can we do it without the chorus girls?
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MAN 2: Okay but what if —guys, this is gonna be great— what if we do a thing about William Henry Harrison?
MAN 3: Who?
WOMAN: The one who died 23 days into his presidency.
MAN 2: YES! The built-in drama! But instead of getting an old guy to do it-
MAN 1: Ewwwwww
MAN 2: Exactly! So instead we get a teen pop star. Is Justin Bieber still relevant?
WOMAN: Oooo, or how old is Rachel’s baby from Friends?
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WOMAN: So scratch the musical idea, because I’m thinking a historical epic like Les Mis without the singing, but there’s no set so it’ll be really cheap. The set is all in the audience’s imaginations. It’s an arty thing.
MAN 2: Who’s it about?
WOMAN: JOE BIDEN! A rags to riches story!
MAN 1: Does he actually have a rags to riches story?
WOMAN: Don’t know. Doesn’t matter! That is the power of art, my friends.
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MAN 1: GEORGE WASHINGTON!
MAN 2: But George Washington is already in ‘Hamilton’.
MAN 3: Oh shit – A SEQUEL.
WOMAN: ‘Hamilton 2: George’s Side’
MAN 1: ‘Hamilton II: A Second Serving of Ham’
MAN 2: ‘George VS Alex: There Can Be Only One’
MAN 3: ‘Sunday in the Park with George’
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WOMAN: You know what else is really popular on Broadway? ‘Phantom of the Opera’
MAN 1: Oh yeah, can we put them together?
MAN 2: Alexander Hamilton falls into a vat of ooze and when he emerges he’s all scarred up.
WOMAN: I think that’s Two Faces’ origin story.
MAN 3: Okay, when Hamilton was shot he didn’t actually die, he faked his own death! And now he walks the earth, immortal, with a mask on part of his face. And sometimes he sings opera, or maybe just R&B, I don’t think people listen to opera. And there are probably some hot chicks. Does Alessandra Ambrosia act? Doesn’t matter, we can teach her.
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MAN 2: Wait, we’re totally missing something. PEOPLE LOVE COMEDY. Take one of the lesser characters from ‘Hamilton’ like, ah…I don’t know, Hercules Mulligan, and show his story, but he’s played by America’s sweetheart: Adam Sandler. We’ll make so much money and then they’ll make a movie out of it and we’ll make so much more money and it doesn’t even have to be good. I mean that’s the nice thing about this idea is it definitely, absolutely, in no way has to be good at all even a little bit. And Hercules Mulligan is a really silly name like Happy Gilmore so it completely makes sense.
WOMAN: Just googled it. Someone’s already doing it.
MAN 2: UGHHHHH ALL THE GOOD ONES ARE TAKEN.
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WOMAN: Kerry Washington.
MAN 1: What about her?
WOMAN: Kerry Washington plays Washington in ‘Washington’.
MAN 2: More Washington?! We’ve already covered this.
WOMAN: Washington on Washington.
MAN 3: I like it.
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MAN 1: The story of Obama as told by Jay-Z and Beyonce.
MAN 2: That’s actually a really good idea.
WOMAN: Does that mean we can bring back Carmen: A Hip Hopera. Can’t we just stage that? God, I love that movie. What ever happened to Mekhi Phifer?
MAN 3: You’re right, let’s just do that instead. Can we convince the writer it somehow slipped into the public domain?
WOMAN: Probably. Writers are idiots.
EVERYONE: hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I KNOW, RIGHT?
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MAN 1: What if we make one of the characters from Glengarry Glen Ross a congressman and add a little soft shoe in the middle?
MAN 3: I like everything about that except the congressman and the soft shoe.
MAN 2: Great, another round of GGR it is!
WOMAN: What if there’s a woman in it?
MEN: NO.
WOMAN: I was just kidding. Hahahaha…ha…ha.
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MAN 1: OH! Why don’t we just produce another run of ‘1776’?
EVERYONE: Oooooh yeah. Okay. Forgot about that. Let’s do it. Haha we’re so silly.
Allison Page is a writer/actor/artistic director of sketch comedy company Killing My Lobster in San Francisco.
San Francisco Theater Pub 