“… if things are only in your mind, and you never write them down, let alone publish them, how could you be recognizable? And if you’re not recognizable, no one will listen to you, your thoughts would be unimportant -unimportant because no one knows who you are, or, dare I say it, WHY you are.”
1 f, 3 m (2 silent)
About the play:
Maxine, a librarian at a major university, likes making poems about real people, using only the languge of library card-catalogues. There are rwo people who are candidates for her poems … or would be, if only they had published books: Enoch Soames is a conspicuously untalented poet who only wants to be recognized as a ssucess by posterity; the other is rumored to be a mathematics genius who became mentally ill, who now only sits and silently stares at users of the library as they pass by.
The play is inspired by “Enoch Soames,” the short story (or is it a non-fiction profile?) by Max Beerbohm, and by the nobel-prize-winning mathematician, John Nash.
Poster by Cary Mazer, photograph courtesy of Princeton University Library.
Available for development or production.
Download a copy of the script at:
or contact the playwright directly, at cmazer@english.upenn.edu
