Tape (play)

Last updated

Tape is a 1999 play by Stephen Belber. [1] The piece premiered and was produced by Access Theater in Tribeca, NY in 1999. Next it was produced at the Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the 2000 Humana Festival of New American Plays. [2] It was later filmed by Richard Linklater as Tape starring Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Uma Thurman. [3] It follows classical unities of action, time and space, featuring three characters in a single plot regarding their differing perspectives of past events, in one unbroken period of real-time, in a single motel room set.

Contents

Synopsis

Tape is set in a motel room in Lansing, Michigan. Vince, an outgoing drug dealer/volunteer firefighter, is in town to support his old high school friend's entry into the Lansing film festival.

His friend, documentary filmmaker Jon Saltzman, joins Vince in his motel room and the two begin to reminisce about their high school years. They get on the subject of Amy Randall, Vince's former girlfriend. It appears that whilst they dated for some time, Vince and Amy never had sex. However, after their relationship had ended, Amy had slept with Jon. Naturally, Vince was hurt even though he and Amy had broken up some time previously.

Vince claims Amy had told him that Jon had date raped her. Vince becomes obsessed with, and eventually succeeds in getting a verbal confession from Jon about the alleged rape. Immediately after Jon's admission, Vince pulls out a hidden tape recorder that had been recording their whole conversation, much to Jon's horror. Vince then tells Jon that he has invited Amy to dinner, and that she will be arriving shortly.

Eventually Amy does arrive and even though all three of them feel awkward, they begin to talk. Amy explains that she is now an Assistant District Attorney in the Lansing Justice Department. Eventually the three discuss what actually happened between Jon and Amy that night at the party.

Amy claims that it was merely rough sex and that Jon did not rape her, leading Jon to believe that she is in denial. After Jon becomes annoyed that Amy is refusing to accept his apology, Amy makes a call with her cell phone to the local police. She asks for a squad car to pick up one person in possession of drugs (Vince), and one in relation to a verifiable rape (Jon). After concluding her phone call, Amy warns the men that they only have about four minutes to make a run for it.

In order to prove to Amy that he is truly remorseful, Jon decides to stay and wait for the police. Vince, realizing that there is nowhere for him to run, flushes his narcotics down the toilet.

Amy reveals that she didn't really call the police, and leaves.

Notable Performances

Related Research Articles

<i>Tape</i> (film) 2001 film by Richard Linklater

Tape is a 2001 American camcorder drama film directed by Richard Linklater and written by Stephen Belber, based on his play of the same name. It stars Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Uma Thurman. The entire film takes place in real time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marsha Norman</span> American writer

Marsha Norman is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple and the book for the musical The Bridges of Madison County. She is co-chair of the playwriting department at The Juilliard School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Busfield</span> American actor and director

Timothy Busfield is an American actor and director. He has played Elliot Weston on the television series thirtysomething; Mark, the brother-in-law of Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams; and Danny Concannon on the television series The West Wing. In 1991 he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for thirtysomething. He is also the founder of the 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization Theatre for Children, Inc.

Robyn Cohen is an American actress best known for her role as Anne Marie Sakowitz, the sunbathing script supervisor in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Daniel Hugh Kelly is an American stage, film and television actor. He is best known for his role on the 1980s ABC TV series Hardcastle and McCormick (1983–86) as the ex-con Mark "Skid" McCormick, co-starring with actor Brian Keith.

Humana Festival of New American Plays is an internationally renowned festival that celebrates the contemporary American playwright. Produced annually in Louisville, Kentucky by Actors Theatre of Louisville, this festival showcases new theatrical works and draws producers, critics, playwrights, and theatre lovers from around the world. The festival was founded in 1976 by Jon Jory, who was Producing Director of Actors Theatre of Louisville from 1969 to 2000. Since 1979 The Humana Festival has been sponsored by the Humana Foundation which is the philanthropic arm of Humana.

<i>Buried Child</i> 1978 play by Sam Shepard

Buried Child is a play written by Sam Shepard that was first presented in 1978. It won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and launched Shepard to national fame as a playwright. The play depicts the fragmentation of the American nuclear family in a context of disappointment and disillusionment with American mythology and the American Dream, the 1970s rural economic slowdown, and the breakdown of traditional family structures and values. In 1979, Shepard also won the Obie Award for Playwriting. The Broadway revival in 1996 received five Tony nominations, including Best Play.

Adam Rapp is an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, musician and film director. His play Red Light Winter was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Bock</span> Canadian playwright

Adam Bock is a Canadian playwright currently living in the United States. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In the fall of 1984, Bock studied at the National Theater Institute at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. He is an artistic associate of the Shotgun Players, an award-winning San Francisco theater group. His play Medea Eats was produced in 2000 by Clubbed Thumb, which subsequently premiered his play The Typographer's Dream in 2002. Five Flights was produced in New York City by the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2004.

Becky Shaw is a play written by Gina Gionfriddo. The play premiered at the Humana Festival in 2008 and opened Off-Broadway in 2008. The play was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Stephen Belber is an American playwright, screenwriter and film director. His plays have been produced on Broadway and in over 50 countries. He directed the film adaptation of his Broadway play, Match, starring Patrick Stewart,. He also wrote and directed the film Management, starring Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn and Woody Harrelson and wrote the HBO film O.G., starring Jeffrey Wright, Theothus Carter, and William Fichtner. Belber was an actor and associate writer on The Laramie Project,, as well as a co-writer of The Laramie Project, Ten Years Later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Gallagher</span> American writer

Mary Gallagher is an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, actress, director and teacher. For six years, she was artistic director of Gypsy, a theatre company in the Hudson Valley, New York, which collaborated with many artists to create site-specific mask-and-puppet music-theatre with texts and lyrics by Gallagher. These pieces included Premanjali and the 7 Geese Brothers, Ama and The Scottish Play. In 1996-97, she directed the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, and she taught playwriting and screenwriting at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts from 2001 to 2010. She is a member of Actors & Writers, a theater company in the Hudson Valley, and the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, where she developed many of her plays and created and moderated the series, "You Can Make a Life: Conversations with Playwrights" from 1994 to 2001.

Halley Feiffer is an American actress and playwright, best known for writing and showrunning Season 12 of American Horror Story.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contemporary American Theater Festival</span>

The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) is an American annual professional theatre festival held at Shepherd University, located in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. According to the New York Times (in 2015), it is one of "50 essential summer festivals". In 2016, Germany's World Guide identified the festival as one of the "Top 10 theatre festivals not to miss this summer". A representative of the Theatre Communications Group in its publication American Theatre stated that "(CATF's) forward focus has helped ... change the American theatre conversation, bringing new voices and pressing topics to the stage ..."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracey Scott Wilson</span> American dramatist

Tracey Scott Wilson is an American playwright, television writer, television producer, and screenwriter. She graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in English and from Temple University with an MA in English Literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actors Theatre of Louisville</span>

Actors Theatre of Louisville is a non-profit performing arts theater located in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Actors Theatre was founded in 1964 following the merging of two local companies, Actors, Inc. and Theatre Louisville, operated by Louisville natives Ewel Cornett and Richard Block. Designated as the "State Theater of Kentucky" in 1974, the theatre has been called one of America's most consistently innovative professional theatre companies, with an annual attendance of 150,000.

Sheri Wilner is an American playwright.

Murphy Guyer is an American actor, playwright, writer and director, best known for his plays and for appearances in the films The Devil's Advocate (1997), The Jackal (1997), Arthur (2011) and Joker (2019).

A Nervous Smile is a play written by John Belluso that was originally commissioned by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. It opened March 4, 2005, for the 29th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. The play was originally directed by David Esbjornson and starred Sean Haberle as Brian, Maureen Mueller as Eileen, Mhari Sandoval as Nic, and Dale Soules as Blanka. Unseen characters include heavy reference to Brian and Eileen's child Emily and Nic's son Dominic as well as to Nic's ex-husband and Blanka's adult daughter. The story is set in a present-day Manhattan apartment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shona Tucker</span> American actress and director

Shona Tucker is an American actress and director. Beginning in the 1990s, she had roles in several television shows including Law & Order and New York Undercover. She has appeared in regional theater, including at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Off-Broadway at The Public Theater and elsewhere, in films such as 2016's King Cobra, and on Broadway in original cast of 2018's To Kill a Mockingbird with Jeff Daniels, and Death of a Salesman with Wendell Pierce. She is the Mary Riepma Ross professor in Drama at Vassar College, and has been teaching there since 2008.

References

  1. 1 2 Palm, Matthew J. (March 4, 2017). "Twisty, edgy 'Tape' plays out in eye-catching dingy reality". Orlando Sentinel . Retrieved April 17, 2021.
  2. Jones, Kenneth (February 29, 2000). "Louisville's Humana Festival Begins Feb. 29 With Premiere of Tape". Playbill . Retrieved April 17, 2021.
  3. "Richard Linklater's Tape". The Tufts Daily . January 30, 2004. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
  4. 1 2 "Stephen Belber's TAPE Returns to NYC More Relevant than Ever". BroadwayWorld . March 11, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2021.