workspace - Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

May 2012
PAUL DAVID YOUNG
pauldavidyoung.com
Excerpt from In the Summer Pavilion
NABILE:
You’re moving out of your place?
BEN:
I don’t need it anymore.
CLARISSA:
You just moved in there. You don’t like it?
BEN:
I don’t need it.
CLARISSA:
Have you talked to your shrink about this?
BEN:
I don’t need her either.
CLARISSA:
Ben, she’s been really good for you. She helped you get clean.
BEN:
And now that I’m clean I’m going to do something with my life.
NABILE:
Fantastic. What are you thinking about?
Paul David Young won the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting
Award and was a finalist for the Kendeda Fellowship. He has been
produced at MoMA PS1, Marlborough Gallery, the Living Theatre,
Lion Theatre, Kraine Theater and the Red Room, and at the
Kaffileikhusid in Reykjavik. He was the Kerr Fellow at the
Millay Colony, the Pearlman Fellow at Djerassi, and a Fulbright Scholar
in Germany. He graduated from Yale College, Columbia Law School,
and New School for Drama. His In the Summer Pavilion premiered
in 2011 (Critic’s Pick, “a deceptively quiet winner,” Backstage.com;
“a perfect little play,” NYTheatre.com; “achy, richly observant story,”
a “gem,” NY Daily News; a “highlight” of the NY Fringe, Village Voice).
He is a Contributing Editor at PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art
(MIT Press). His translation, with Carl Weber, of Heiner Müller’s
Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome will be published in 2012.
BEN:
I’m not thinking. I know. I met this girl, Theresa, when I was in rehab. We talked. In rehab, you talk and talk.
It’s all you do. Talk and think about your life. Why you’re using and then what else is there, what do you do
with the time you have on Earth. Since we graduated from Princeton, what have I done? I was hooked on
coke and then I switched to heroin. I’ve never had a job. I’ve never had a relationship. I’ve done nothing with
my life. Nothing.
In the Summer Pavilion, CONT’D ON P. 20
19