Going Bananas! to be published

This is turning out to be a very good year for me. First I had a record-breaking number of productions, which I reported in May. Now I get to report that my fifth play for the year (and 37th play overall) has just been accepted for publication by Pioneer Drama Service.

It's titled Going Bananas! and it's a wacky comedy about modern art. The play has a cast of 12 (1M, 2F, 9 any), uses a single art gallery set, and runs about 70 minutes.

First steps

I've been toying with the idea of setting a play in an art gallery for years. My original concept was to make it a comedy about the theft of a painting that was a cheap knockoff of a more famous painting. I even had what I thought was a catchy title: Who Stole Mona?

The problem is that stubborn old me wanted the theft to happen on stage during the play itself and I could never quite figure out how to pull that off.

Then in 2020, the very gifted playwright Michael Druce published a play with Pioneer titled Murder at the Art Show. That felt a little close for comfort so I tossed my idea aside forever.

Or so I thought. The thing is I've always loved art, and my mind just wouldn't let go of such a rich, potentially comedic setting. So earlier this year, after I finished writing Don't Rock the Boat! and I was waiting for Belmont Day School to premiere 30 Minutes Till Boarding, I returned once more to the art gallery. And this time I came up with a premise that I was sure couldn't fail.

Three little words

Here's the synopsis:

When is a banana not a banana? When it's a priceless work of art, of course!

At least that's what an ambitious young art dealer named Danica discovers. Her first charity auction is about to begin and the movers who were supposed to deliver the art piece she's auctioning accidentally break it, making it completely unsellable.

That's when snooty art critic Winfield Jeppson peeks behind the unveiling curtain and spies a banana with the words "DO NOT EAT" scribbled on it. It was left there by one of the movers when his lunch was interrupted, but Winfield believes it to be a groundbreaking work of conceptual art.

Desperate to save the auction, Danica offers the banana for sale instead. To her shock, the bidding tops out at one million dollars. The charity is thrilled. But Danica faces a new dilemma when the mover returns for his banana. Can she convince everyone (including the mover himself!) that he's really an eccentric artist? Or will her entire scheme blow up in her face?

The seed

Reading that, you may assume that the play was inspired by the famous (or infamous!) artwork of a banana duct-taped to the wall of an art gallery. And you'd be partly right.

But my original inspiration actually came about years before when I visited a small art gallery in my then-home of Colorado Springs, Colorado. The gallery was exhibiting an eclectic variety of art pieces by local artists and I found them, well, mildly interesting.

But what really grabbed my attention was a chair in the corner of the room with a stack of old board games resting on it. I'm sure they were set there by the employees of the gallery for when things got slow (which, from the looks of it, was most of the time).

Now, if there's one thing I love as much as art, it's board games. I grew up playing a ton of them with my brothers, and I wanted to see if I recognized any of them.

That's when one of the gallery assistants came over and said to me, in a hushed voice, that the games were not an art piece.

Well, duh.

Banana split

And so, when I was brainstorming ideas for my art play, I simply merged the idea of a household object being mistaken for an art piece with the idea that a household object that's treated as art could sell for millions of dollars (that duct-taped banana, by the way, eventually sold for $6.2 million. Yes, I know.)

So I had my plot, and from that point on, the story just flowed out of me. The challenge was getting the tone right. Of course, it's very, very silly that a banana with the words "DO NOT EAT" on it could generate a bidding war among a set of very knowledgeable art buyers, and the play could have taken a very cynical view of the contemporary art world.

But I didn't want to do that. I have a deep respect for contemporary art and the artists who create it. so while I do poke some gentle fun at the snootiness of the characters I assembled for my play, I keep things pretty light. More importantly, I close the play with a very important lesson for children and adults alike.

Art is all around us. All you have to do is look.