Synopsis: Throwing Your Voice

A SHORT SYNOPSIS OF “THROWING YOUR VOICE” by Craig Lucas

The plot: an after dinner conversation with two 30-something urban yuppie couples explores ramifications of popular news topics circa 1990. They reiterate youthful ideals, but having grown used to living in the lap of privilege, lip service is paid to the past.

Lucy and Doug entertain a pregnant Sara and Richard. The topic, the cold-blooded ruthlessness of a cheerleader mom who hired paid killers to upset the competition sets the stage. Richard imagines how he could hypothetically condone murdering someone in his way in the subway or at the grocery store. The others join in. 

There is a conspiracy of smug superiority as they indulge in a macabre mental exercise of getting revenge without getting caught. They joke about becoming territorial as the cheerleader mom when their children become teenagers. Survival of the fittest, all ethics aside. 

Coffee broadens conversational horizons to include Latin American politics, the justification of killing innocent Iraqis during the Gulf War. Doug notes that: “...people often pay others to do their dirty work so they don’t have to look at the consequences.” Richard muses what it would be like, “...if everyone was actually responsible for their own actions...” Doug’s segue to personal luxuries: fur, diamonds, and coffee brings a protest from Lucy, she doesn’t want Americans to feel guilty and defiled. 

They conjure a story that Sara’s diamond ring is from South Africa where children are killed in diamond mines. Here, the plot takes on an Absurdist twist where the ring becomes a loudspeaker, a tiny voice screaming of the tortures of the past. 

This use of Deux et machina and spectacle drive the point home that by association, no one is innocent of murder or torture. We’re all guilty opportunists, no matter what the guise. Blood is still on our hands whether we gave the order or as consumers, we benefit from the exploitation of the lives of others.

 4/3/2002
MFA Playwriting Brighde Mullins