Some will note the addition of GOD as a new character. I'm not certain how he'll, uh, play into the action but since I am using a refrain that includes GOD, I figure I'd better have him as a player.
I may do without the narrator at some point.
 |
| A public appearance by Helen Palmer Geisel shortly before she died. |
PEOPLE WANT TO MARVEL
CHARACTERS
Helen
Palmer Seuss
NARRATOR
Theodor
“Dr. Seuss” Geisel
Audrey
Stone Dimond Geisel
God
SETTING and STAGING:
To be determined
Helen opens, speaking from the dead so the play is her reminiscing about her life with Ted Geisel. Since the couple were in their heyday in the fifties and sixties which is too far back for many to recall, I am searching to inform the audience about their life and the children's books that were written.
I have thought of constructing a crossword puzzle that will introduce the key players and book characters, the latter of which do not figure in the play per se but they are touchstones for millions who will recognize the allusion to this cat-in-a-hat or that elephant-hatching-an-egg.
The play will probably not start this way but it's what I've got at the present.
Let
me see, how to be, I can't just be me.
I'll
try to recall but I won't name them all.
Ted's
stories, I mean, not to be mean
I
don't want to create a scene but I loved him
With
all my being.
God
saw this and it was good.
Early
on there was Mulberry Street,
A
wondrous place where good friends meet
Then
Bartholomew Cubbins and 500 hats.
Followed
by a hat on a cat, an elephant named Horton,
Green
Eggs and Ham which left people snorting.
There
were a few, If I Rans, the circus and the zoo
Oh
who are we fooling, there were King's Stilts,
Scrambled
Eggs and Yertle the Turtle, too.
Oh,
and Happy Birthday to You along with One Fish Two Fish
Red
Fish Blue Fish, and grinches, sneetches, and sons of a beeches.
Okay,
I confess, that last title is not on the list, it didn't exist.
Could
of though because he didn't love me to the end of.
Allow
me introduce myself,
My
name is Helen Palmer Seuss
I'm
not a shiksa, I'm a Jewess.
Older
than he by six measly years,
He
a tender 23 but no matter to me,
for
Ted did not like the patter
of
tiny, shiny little feet
so
family be damnly
it's
drawing and writing he liked
not
kids, cats, dogs or bikes
He
was known to say, in his jocular way,
You
have 'em, I'll entertain 'em,
This
is what he said, before I was dead,
Over
and over, mister so cavalier Ted.
Thus
he and me, we, the bees knees
Wrote
stories as I was a kiddie writer, too
Caught
up with the true sky blue and yellow mellow fellows.
I
followed my muse with nothing to lose.
Or
so I thought.
