How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them Read online

  Praise for the plays of Halley Feiffer

  HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND THEN KILL THEM

  “Ms. Feiffer … is building a reputation for fearlessness.”

  —Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times

  “Thank God … for the warped creative mind of playwright/actress Halley Feiffer, who harnesses the weird to full, gory effect in How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them, an uproarious and deeply unsettling new dark comedy … Equally laugh-out-loud funny, jaw-droppingly gross, and thoroughly sad … Feiffer’s unique, refreshing voice is one to which attention should be paid.”

  —David Gordon, Theatermania

  “Disturbingly funny.”

  —Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News

  “A wicked comedy … Feiffer … is an expert comic actor with an appealingly skewed sensibility.”

  —Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post

  “Feiffer … has a commendable eye for the absurd.”

  —The New Yorker

  “There’s great stuff here … dark and weird.”

  —Helen Snow, Time Out New York

  I’M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD

  “Viciously funny … brutally effective. Feiffer takes a tough look at the forces that can bring us to our knees.”

  —Adam Feldman, Time Out New York

  “A bone-chilling … punishing drama.”

  —Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

  “Blistering, blackly funny.”

  —Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News

  “One minute you’re laughing, the next you’re cringing … the play sticks in your head like a crazy nightmare.”

  —Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post

  “Funny, scary, and completely over the top in its own right … goes straight for the jugular through the heart.”

  —Robert Hofler, The Wrap

  “Provocative, sensitive, shocking and often very unsettling … polished and probing. One of the best plays I’ve seen this season.”

  —Rex Reed, New York Observer

  “Exhilaratingly toxic.”

  —Joe McGovern, Entertainment Weekly

  “A hard-hearted stunner.”

  —Michael Schulman, The New Yorker

  “Halley Feiffer’s ferocious, explosive dialogue in I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard is in a class of its own.”

  —Lee Kinney, TheEasy.com

  “It’s a fearless piece of work, riveting and hilarious.”

  —Robert Feldberg, Bergen Record

  HALLEY FEIFFER is a New York-based writer and actress. Her full-length plays include I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard (World Premiere Atlantic Theater Company, 2015), How To Make Friends And Then Kill Them (World Premiere Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 2014), and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City (World Premiere MCC Theater, 2016). Her plays have been developed by Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, New York Theater Workshop, LAByrinth Theater Company, The O’Neill, and elsewhere. Her work has been commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Williamstown Theater Festival and Playwrights Horizons. She won a Theater World Award for her performance in the 2011 Broadway revival of The House of Blue Leaves, and co-wrote and starred in the 2013 film He’s Way More Famous Than You. She is a writer on the Starz series The One Percent.

  Copyright

  CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that performance of the Play HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND THEN KILL THEM is subject to payment of a royalty. The Play is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention, the Universal Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including without limitation professional/ amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording. all other forms of mechanical, electronic and digital reproduction, transmission and distribution, such as CD, DVD, the Internet, private and file-sharing networks, information storage and retrieval systems, photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed upon the matter of readings, permission for which must be secured from the Author’s agent in writing. Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to ICM Partners 730 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10019. Attn: Di Glazer.

  This edition first published in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2016 by Overlook Duckworth, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  NEW YORK

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales, please contact [email protected], or write us at above address.

  LONDON

  30 Calvin Street

  London E1 6NW

  [email protected]

  www.ducknet.co.uk

  For bulk and special sales, please contact [email protected], or write us at the above address.

  Copyright © 2016 by Halley Feiffer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  EISBN 978-1-4683-1657-5

  Contents

  Praise for the plays of Halley Feiffer

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  Cast of Characters

  Characters

  Setting

  Scene 1

  Scene 2

  Scene 3

  Scene 4

  Scene 5

  Scene 6

  Scene 7

  Scene 8

  Scene 9

  Scene 10

  Scene 11

  Scene 12

  Scene 13

  Scene 14

  Scene 15

  PREFACE

  In the course of the fifteen scenes of How To Make Friends and Then Kill Them, Halley Feiffer tracks two sisters and a friend through their obsessive loves, hatreds, rivalries, fears, cruelties, successes, failures, small choices becoming defining points for life over a nineteen-year period, starting at age 10 when the taste of gin is the smell of an adult, ending at age 29 in destruction [the age Feiffer was when she wrote it]. They act out their roles of what they think it means to be an adult, to be a woman in power.

  It takes place for the most part in a room with two ways out—one leading to the world, one down to the cellar. That route is only taken once. The walls are lined with shelves of every kind of alcoholic drink.

  I asked the playwright to tell me the story of her play.

  “Three damaged women use each other to fill each other’s emotional holes, progressively fail to do so and, in so doing, warp each other’s lives beyond repair.”

  When I read this play, I thought two things. Jean Genet and Alicia Silverstone. Yes. That terrific movie Clueless, which used Jane Austen’s Emma as a giddy leaping off point.

  Are Feiffer’s two sisters descendants of Genet’s Claire and Solange? [Devoid of Genet’s political and psycho-sexual implications and that’s a whole lot
of devoid but let me go on. I’m trying to get a handle on this play.] Did Halley Feiffer pull the Clueless tactic on Genet? I asked Halley if she had read The Maids.

  “I didn’t read it until after I’d finished my play. I read The Maids and said, I have been here before. As if Genet’s sensibility had been waiting. I read the play thinking it was one thing, and then the bottom would fall out and the play would become something else, again and again. I loved its constant shift, but even more the sadistic and cruel way the maids treated each other, the way women often do, and how early it starts.”

  Feiffer gives the children a very specific voice.

  Where had I heard it before?

  Yes. Those raging female indie rock groups who blasted out of the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s with Patti Smith as their muse. Girl bands like Sleater-Kinney, whose lead singer Corin Tucker’s first recording was a rage about her period.

  I asked Feiffer if she knew Sleater-Kinney. She said “I can’t believe out of all the bands on earth you picked up on Sleater-Kinney. You’re this [I heard her searching for the word—old? white-haired? She settled on … ] long time playwright. How do you know Sleater-Kinney?”

  Sorry, Halley. This is about you.

  “I first heard them in 2006 when I was acting in Eric Bogosian’s Suburbia at Second Stage. Kieran Culkin seduced my character with a Sleater-Kinney song called either Jumper or Jumpers. I liked this song because either way it sounded like suicide and it was coming out of women’s mouths. The show’s sound designer named Muttt with three t’s put together a bunch of female punk rock songs for me and it opened up a world. A new voice of feminism. I really wasn’t much into music before that. I never listened to the words but made up my own words to the music and the title. I started listening. You know Sleater-Kinney? I’m really impressed.” [NOTE: Ms Feiffer only said it once. The compliment so pleased me I put it in twice.]

  How do you define feminism? What does that mean today?

  “To me being a feminist means what it’s always meant. No more than wanting the same rights as men. Feminism is the freedom for women to behave as repugnantly as men—if we don’t get the help we need. The guys in True West treat each other abominably. Nobody calls Sam Shepard misogynistic. People have called me sexist, do I hate women? Men do it all the time but women aren’t supposed to. I’ve treated people this way and, yes, have been treated this way. Why did I write it? Perhaps to break the chain.”

  Is the three-character play autobiographical?

  “I was an only child until I was ten. My play is more the fantasy of an only child. It started out as a group of short plays called It’s Just Weird Now: Short Plays About Friendship about female friendships, women treating each other horribly. Someone asked me to find a narrative link for those plays. Instead I wrote this play.”

  Influences?

  “The first play I ever saw was Guys and Dolls with Nathan Lane and I loved the dazzle of it, but the first play that had a profound energizing effect on me was Arthur Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You In the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad. I read that and didn’t know the stage was a place where you could have a talking fish. I wanted to be there.”

  She is there. It’s called now. Halley Feiffer is 30. Her last play I’m Gonna Pray For You Hard staked out emotional terrain she’ll be exploring the rest of her life. There’s this play you hold in your hands right now. Her next is called A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City.

  I can’t wait.

  —John Guare

  July 10, 2015

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A major THANK YOU to the generous people and institutions whose contribution was crucial in the creation of this play:

  Jenny Allen, Jules Feiffer, Lina Makdisi, Maya Kazan, Darren Katz, Chris Burney, Brooke Bloom, Jenni Barber, Greta Lee, Ari Edelson, Reiko Aylesworth, Mandy Siegfried, Greg Keller, Kate Maguire, Phillip Witte, Sarah Kauffman, Caitlin Teeley, Samantha Richert, John Eisner, Desiree Akhavan, Jesse Eisenberg, Evan Cabnet, Betty Gilpin, Alison Pill, Cristin Milioti, Tracee Chimo, Sarah Steele, Nikhil Melnechuk, Bob Holman, Robyn Goodman, Josh Fiedler, Jill Rafson, Daryl Roth, Joshua Astrachan, John Guare, David Van Asselt, Daniel Talbott, Brian Miskell, Brian Long, Jessica Amato, Shira-Lee Shalit, Lillith Fallon, Belle Caplis, Stephanie Seward, Wesleyan University, and The Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. Second Stage Theatre, The Drama Bookshop, The LARK, Berkshire Theatre Group, The Bowery Poetry Club, LAByrinth Theater Company, Daniel Kluger, Andromache Chalfant, Jessica Pabst, Tyler Micoleau, Amanda Perry, Mikey Denis, Eugenia Furneaux, Katya Campbell, Keira Keeley, Jen Ponton, Elizabeth Carlson, Kip Fagan and Di Glazer.

  This play was developed with generous support from The Orchard Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm and the Cape Cod Theatre Project.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  The world premiere of How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them was produced by Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, New York City, 2013. Directed by Kip Fagan.

  ADA Katya Campbell

  SAM Keira Keeley

  DORRIE Jen Ponton

  CHARACTERS

  ADA: Ages 10–29; played by one actress. Beautiful, charismatic, alcoholic. Wants to be an actress but her obsession with alcohol holds her back.

  SAM: Ages 9–28; played by one actress. Ada’s sister. Less beautiful than Ada; plucky, strong-willed, whip-smart. Wants to be a graphic novelist but her obsession with her sister holds her back.

  DORRIE: Ages 10–29; played by one actress. Insecure, hugely self-conscious, desperate to give and receive love. Possessed of one of the purest hearts there is. Her sole purpose is her devotion to Ada and Sam.

  SETTING

  Present Day. A suburban American town not far from New York City.

  PRODUCTION NOTES

  The set should be spare and minimal. All design elements should have a neglected quality.

  Ellipses in the text indicate a character having a thought—they do not necessarily need to translate into significant pauses.

  SCENE 1

  Darkness.

  The voices of three girls scream: “CHILDHOOD!!!”

  We hear Randy Newman’s cheerful and heartwarming song “You’ve Got a Friend In Me” playing, and then …

  … the sound of hands slapping against each other.

  Lights creep up on ADA and SAM—ten and nine years old—in their kitchen. They wear matching school uniforms. ADA’s skirt is rolled up higher than SAM’s. ADA wears a string of beads around her neck. SAM has a pencil tucked behind her ear.

  They play a hand game—very intensely, and very rapidly. They play it as if their lives depended on it.

  We see that the music is playing from a transistor radio, on the kitchen counter.

  The room has two doors—one leading off to the rest of the house, and one down to the cellar. The back wall of the kitchen is lined with shelves, which are filled with bottles of seemingly every kind of alcohol.

  Laying out on the kitchen table is a sketchbook and a pencil.

  After several rounds of the hand game, SAM messes up, and the game falls apart.

  ADA

  You messed up, that was six.

  SAM

  I’m sorry, I thought it was five.

  ADA

  Yeah, I could see you did.

  Beat.

  SAM

  Do you want to play again …?

  ADA

  No. I don’t.

  Beat. Then—

  ADA uses a chair to get up and stand on the table.

  ADA

  Can you turn off the radio and get the flashlight? I would like to practice my mon-o-logue.

  SAM nods, scurries over to the radio; turns it off. She opens a cupboard and removes a large, unwieldy flashlight. Scurries back over to the table and squats down, shining the flashlight up onto ADA, as if it were a footlight on a stage.

  ADA

  Okay, say: “ … and … Action!”
/>
  SAM

  …and … Action!

  ADA suddenly strikes a pose—twists her body into some sort of highly unnatural, dramatic position.

  ADA

  (Performatively.)

  I just … can’t help … but think … I am … extremely … beautiful.

  A beat. She changes her “blocking”: strikes a sort of sexy pose.

  ADA

  Sometimes …? While brushing my teeth? Or picking a blackhead?? Out of my nose??? I’ll step back, and look at my face in the mirror, and I’ll see … me …!

  (She strikes a sort of modern dance-y pose.)

  And I’m always … so pleasantly … surprised …!

  (She strikes a sort of heroin-chic pose.)

  Because I’m … gorgeous.

  She holds her absurd pose.

  A beat. Then—

  SAM

  (Applauding.)

  Yaaaay …!

  ADA

  (Hopping off the table.)

  What did you think of the changes?

  SAM

  They’re really strong.

  ADA

  I’m still working on it.

  ADA hops of the table. SAM turns off the flashlight, and looks at ADA, admiringly.

  SAM

  Can I draw you for a second?

  ADA

  Fine. But just for a second. I find posing for your drawings very boring.

  SAM beams, grabs her sketchbook off the table and her pencil from behind her ear, and hunkers down.

  ADA strikes a brand new dramatic pose. SAM begins to sketch her.

  SAM

  (Sketching with incredible seriousness.)

  You’ve always been so pretty, Ada.

  ADA

  I hate it when you tell me that, Sam.

  SAM

  I know, I know—I didn’t forget. I just like telling you.

  ADA

  But I hate it soooooo much.

  SAM

  I know.

  (Beat.)

  But do you really?

  Beat. ADA considers. …

  ADA

  Sometimes I like it.