The Island Trilogy

This book is a collection of three plays, all of them set in Caribbean island settings. The sets are extremely minimal or completely dispensable. The only indispensable element remains the people in the room talking. They come together as lonely people seeking love, as entrenched criminals and politicians determined to survive another day, as earnest students of philosophy and religion with no answers. The islands lend an air of casualness and lightness to what otherwise might seem too serious a situation. (One must be more tolerant on an island since it’s much easier to be trapped there, as indeed some of our characters are.) There are governments to overthrow, people to betray and money to be laundered; and no one ends up with a mate they ever would have chosen on the mainland. In the limited realm of the islands, choices come to you faster than you can come to the choices. Ultimately sides must be chosen, and every side largely consists of bad guys. Such people as pass for good guys ultimately drop out of the game (but even so, they game might bring itself to them). And the glue that holds it altogether is the underlying premise that the human is in-situation, is inherently social and will, like it or not, be evaluated and used (even when they sincerely love, as love, while real, still comes with all of the treachery and violence that the subconscious holds within it). No human trait is ever truly suppressed, but only moved around, shuffled and re-presented as if new. And so let us talk, or rather, more to the point, let us deliberate, do a real conference call of sorts. We must all talk this out, and we must do it, are doing it, on-stage. Why pretend otherwise? And let’s do it in the presence of jokers and clowns and jesters. After the lawyer and priest have cross-examined you, let’s have the comic have the last shot at finding out what under the hood. My goal is to use this collection of millionaires, gangsters, celebrities and lost souls to represent in fictional form as many of the deliberations as I’ve been able to point my finger at in this long journey from conversation to conversation. It’s my belief that open and flexible people will be able to navigate and negotiate (and sometimes surprise themselves with a dexterity and they might not have known they had). One is advised to take this book along with your favorite vice and relax into page after page of dilemmas. You will see that, surely enough, most of the characters find their way (unless they find themselves at the bottom of the ocean). The human, in these pages and in life, shows himself to have an unfathomable navigational apparatus with tools he himself can never be fully aware of. It’s time for us to get in that airline seat and hop from island to island. Sometimes it’s best to keep looking, even if you don’t know what you’re looking for. —- ISBN: 9798371704320