Indoor/Outdoor

by
Kenny Finkle

Director Scenic Design Costume Design Lighting Design Sound Design Properties Design Marketing/Public Relations Production Stage Manager House Manage Box Office Light Board Operator Sound Board Operator Spotlight Operator Wood Back Stage Crew Technical Director Master Electrician Set Construction Scenic Artist Lighting Crew Assistant Sound Design Casting Coordinator Production Photography Graphic Design Direct Marketing Copywriter		Stefan Novinski Susan Gratch Melanie Watnick Lisa D. Katz Drew Dalzell Robyn Taylor David Elzer/Demand PR Arminia LaManna Lee Webb Pitts Nora Frankovich Sergio Castillo Spencer Howard Eleanor Wood Jake Regal Robert T. Kyle Jeremy Bryden Studio 1247 Phillip Spencer James King,Watson Bradshaw Danny Barbosa, Sean Kozmo  Cricket Myers Patricia Cullen Michael Lamont Ricky Vodka Rich Lippmann Write Hand Creative

CHARACTERS

Samantha Shuman Matilda Oscar

Tessa Thompson Jeff Marlow Shana Wride Louis Lotorto

Understudy for Samantha: Sara Painter

Understudies never substitute for listed players unless a specific announcement is made prior to the performance.

Author's Notes

I started writing Indoor/Outdoor in the fall of 2002. I had the idea to write a play about my cat (or rather several of the cats I've known in my life) for almost a year before this. Every time I thought about writing the play, I would cringe and avoid it. I thought a play about a cat was a very very very bad idea. But the story kept coming back to me. I decided that maybe I should try to write a ten minute play based on the idea --- get it out of the way and get to my "important" play.

I always knew how the play would end. So I started to write towards that image. Soon I found the play expanding far past the initially-allotted ten pages. I realized I wasn't really writing about my cats at all but that I was writing about my own relationship with my partner and how challenging, thrilling, and surprising that was to me. And so I kept going deeper and deeper.

As the play took shape and developed, through the help of the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, the earnestness of the story and the heart of the characters took more and more precedence. I like to think of the play in primary colors. Not just the set and costumes but the characters and their emotional lives. There is very little subtext --- there is very little gray --- characters say what they feel or can't say what they feel but are still transparent in it. They are completely earnest, they don't comment, they are pure.

There used to be a line in the play that said "Maybe unconditional love is the scariest love of all because how do we know if we really deserve it?"  We struggle so much in our lives with our own self worth. How much we value ourselves almost always depends on how much someone else values us. And that value almost always comes with conditions. Indoor/Outdoor for me is about letting go of what the outside world says is right or wrong or how much it’s worth and allowing yourself to trust that you do deserve to love and be loved.

And that, perhaps, in this cynical and fast paced world, the cliches are all true: Love truly conquers all, Love can move mountains, All you need is love....

-- Kenny Finkle

Special Thanks

Derek Bjornsen, Bardwell's on the Boulevard, Brad Brown, Andrew Campbell, The City of Burbank, The Colony Board of Trustees, Brooks Gardner, Sarah Hartmann, Mark Henderson, Burris Jakes, Demetrio James, Emergent Entertainment, Salvador Palacios, Patterson Graphics, Craig Pierce, Pomodoro Cucina Italiana, Rich Roche, Southwest Airlines, Wadler Data Systems, Lee Wochner, CounterIntuity