All Work And No Play

During the stage play of “1940’s Radio Hour”, I wrote a stream of consciousness story. One page per night. This… is that story!

But first, the story of the story:

I played Clifton Feddington in the stage show “1940’s Radio Hour”. A really fun slice-of-life show about a radio station in the… wait for it… 1940’s! The great thing about our performance was that we treated the stage like it was the radio studio. We all came in as if we were coming to work for the evening shift. Then stayed the entire show on stage. Even during intermission we were there milling about, waiting for the radio program to go back on the air.

I was the station manager / head honcho. And during the performance I spent a lot of time in my office (on stage) typing up the imaginary script for that evening’s performance. Except instead of typing nonsense, I typed nonsense that turned into a story… of sorts.

Each night, I’d type a full page of the story, then come out of my office and hand it off to someone. By the end, I had a lot of pages.

So!!! Here’s the story. Don’t expect it to make sense. After all, it was stream of consciousness during a live stage performance.

Enjoy!

(first page follows… retyped… full pdf story is below)

“All Work And No Play”
makes
Jack A. Dull
(boy)
It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled in the trees like
a horse with a bum leg. But you can ‘t get a cup of coffee anymore
in this town- – not at night , not in the winter, not when it’s cold,
not for a nickel, not with my girl you don’t.
But, I haven’t got time for that now. Not with ten guys on my
tail with the combined intelligence of a sack of White Castles.
Let me start a t the beginning…
Well, it was exactly fifteen years ago today. Yeah, I remember it
just like it was yesterday. Come to think of it, that was only ten
years ago. Or maybe seven. But that’s not the point I was trying
to make. Yeah, there was no getting around it. I had strayed so far
from anything resembling a plot that I couldn’t even see the graveyard
from where I was kneeling.
So, there I was, nipple deep in yellow snow with nothing to show for
it but a jerky little alcoholic dog names ted. That’s when I met
Jack A. Dull. I never did find out what the A. stood for, but there
he was, just the same.
“Looks like your cat’s got a nasty fur ball”, he quipped.
All I could think of to say in response to a witty but inane
comment like that was “Peop1e are always saying something
about anything, it’s just too bad that no people will ever
be any closer to the truth than I am to you right now.”
I could tell by the look in his ear that he was expecting a comment
just like the one I ‘d thought of. Too bad that wasn’t the one that
came out of my mouth.
“That’s no way to retort a comment”, she sighed.
“Well, well, if it isn’t little Miss Underwire…”
Tracy Underwire, to be precise. She had a body that was so firm
that it looked like she used a gallon of mousse on each side. But
that wasn’t the reason she showed up tonight. No , that answer was
just a little too pat for me. Butter just wasn’t in the cards for
me. And let me tell you, I was the type of guy who liked a little
butter with my cards once in a while.

(full pdf below)
1940s_All-Work-No-Play

All content written and voiced by Joe J Thomas online at: JoeActor.com