Boys Life Howard Korder Pdf

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Program Boys Life Howard Korder Pdf Free Author by: Boy Scouts of America Languange: en Publisher by: Rowman & Littlefield Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 78 Total Download: 972 File Size: 41,8 Mb Description: A Followup to the Highly Successful Best of Boys' Life Boys’ Life, the magazine for Boy Scouts of America, was launched. BOYS LIFE HOWARD KORDER PDF. September 17, 2019. THE STORY: Told in a series of fast-paced, sharply etched scenes, the play traces the misadventures of three former college buddies now seeking to make their. How else to explain the fact that, back in, audiences could be needled by ” Boys’ Life,” Howard Korder’s now.

Told in a series of fast-paced, sharply etched scenes, the play traces the misadventures of three former college buddies now seeking to make their way in the big city�and with various women of their acquaintance. There is the cynical Jack, who is already married and a father, but is not above pursuing daytime adulteries while babysitting in the park; the innocent, vulnerable Phil, who grows weary of not being taken seriously and concludes that being unhappy is the way things are supposed to be; and the handsome, amoral Don, who risks a solid relationship with his girlfriend by sleeping with another, simply to see if he 'could get away with it.' Moving along briskly, with its mood of satirical humor brilliantly sustained, the play dissects and anatomizes the male narcissism�and protracted adolescence�which characterizes its protagonists and, in the end, makes it hilariously clear that it is actually the women who possess the qualities of 'manhood' and maturity which their deluded lovers so desperately lay claim to.

BOY'S LIFE

Griffin Theatre Company

Men are all palaver and what they can get. --Lily the caretaker's daughter in James Joyce's 'The Dead'

Boy's Life is the slick, vaguely reactionary magazine published by the Boy Scouts of America that has been telling boys for generations now how to fold the flag, how to find your way through the woods with a compass, and how to catch a fish almost as big as Dad's.

Howard

What Boy's Life never taught was how to get Dad out of the office on a Saturday to go fishing in the first place. Nor did Boy's Life (or the Boy Scouts, for that matter) do a particularly good job of informing us of the importance of male friendships. Howard Korder's flawless comedy Boy's Life is about the painful time in men's lives when they discover that giving up childish things means drifting away from their male friends. The play begins with three friends in their late 20s--Don, Jack, and Phil--hanging out together, wasting the evening away, just as they've wasted thousands of evenings before this. Jack tortures Don by asking him to 'Name three things that happened in the 1970s,' while Phil, oblivious, listens to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer on his Walkman ('I haven't heard this since college, you know?').

Boys Life Howard Korder Pdf

These boy-men couldn't be less ambitious, although their refusal to plan for the future hardly frees them from quiet desperation. Don regrets not becoming an astronaut, although he won't do anything to achieve this dubious career goal. Phil's job, whatever it is, bores him so much he can hardly talk about how great it is without sounding insincere: 'Things are going really really great for me right now. Just fine. I have my own partition now, over at the office, they put up one of those, ah . . . so that's really good.' And Jack, whose wife makes piles of money in investment banking, has no job at all--and no prospects. He's a house husband, though it's a role he denies, even when he's at the park with his son Jason.

In nine very funny scenes, the play charts the trio's inevitable drift apart, a drift that accelerates after Don falls for Lisa, a waitress who studies sculpting at the School of the Art Institute. Lisa, naturally, has little patience for Don's boyish ways--'I'm not your mother'--and even less for his 'creepy friends.' Jack, in turn, has zero tolerance for Lisa. Much of the second half of the play concerns this subtle, below-the-surface tug-of-war between Jack and Lisa for control of Don's soul.

Korder has an excellent ear for dialogue, although it might be more accurate to say that he has an excellent ear for Mamet-esque dialogue. Korder shares both Mamet's infatuation with the poetry of profanity--'Goddamn shit-eating asshole scumbags'--and his love of the hard-boiled poetry of male bonding--'We're living in thrilling days, Don.' And like Mamet, Korder has learned the difficult art of snappy, clever dialogue:

Jack: Don, a toast, a very special toast, to the ladies. . . . Where would we be without them?

Don: We'd be nowhere.

Jack: We wouldn't even be here.

Don: We wouldn't even exist.

Jack: We would not.

Don: It's a sobering thought.

Boys Life Howard Korder Pdf

Jack: It's food for thought.

Boys Life Howard Korder Pdf

Don: It's a thought to think (pause).

Life

Jack: Well, no sense in blaming them for it now.

Boys Life Howard Korder Pdf

Even the plot is reminiscent of Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago--close friends find love affair interferes with friendship. And like Mamet, Korder doesn't always treat 'the ladies' very well. In fact, Korder's women seem to come in only three varieties: insensitive, emotionally disturbed, and sarcastic and bitchy.

Boys Life Howard Korder Synopsis

Of course, Korder's similarity to Mamet may be more than coincidental. Boy's Life was first performed in February 1988 by a theater company made up of former Mamet students (the Atlantic Theater Company) directed by one of Mamet's poker--and theater--buddies (W.H. Macy) and performed at Lincoln Center, where a Mamet pal (Gregory Mosher) is artistic director. Still, Korder could do worse than to imitate a master like Mamet.

Every scene in the play works, every actor in the cast seems well-suited to the part he or she plays. Even, believe it or not, the scene changes are fun. Director Neil Wilson has done a good job steering the production away from baby-boomer stereotypes. Not an easy thing to do in a play as full of trendy, contemporary references as this one--everything from pasta class and anorexia nervosa to Elvis Costello and Eddie Haskell.

Boys Life By Howard Korder Pdf

And it helps when your cast includes as many terrific actors as this. The charming and charismatic Nelson Russo, in particular, is a real find as Jack. By turns childish, manipulative, adulterous, and wickedly funny, Russo carries it off without a hitch. Tim Bakker look-alike David Williams, too, holds his own as the less complex Don.

Boys Life Howard Korder Pdf Book

Among the women, Jeanne M. Dwan, as Lisa, and Mona Mansour, as Karen, really stand out. Dwan in particular shows a real flair for comedy, able to get laughs with the most innocent-looking lines. Debra Schommer, too, should be given a big hand for turning one of those awful 80s-style blond bimbos--the kind of woman who asks, 'What's 10K?'--into a real person.