In
“All Things Chicken”, the two male
lead characters seemingly engage with each other about their everyday lives,
but they are so actually so disconnected within themselves – as one is stuck in
past romantic angst and the other man detaches completely from his own
upbringing while spinning fantasies of the future – that they remain profoundly, stupidly immature about the present and only
stay afloat by clinging to each other as life preservers.
More specifically, they do so by entertaining each other – thus why I label this play as my version of “Waiting for Godot” but instead of being set in a barren desert wasteland, my play is set in the modern wasteland of fast food joints and diner dives, where the “boys” talk about profound things in profoundly foolish ways.
Structurally,
I label the play a vaudeville because it (again like "...Godot") has
a circular structure and each scene is made up of "routines"
that the boys create to pass the time.
Moreover, these routines make a meaningless moment into something
significant, something fun and form the building blocks of their friendship.
The
parallels to “…Godot” are not exact – the language is more naturalistic and there
is a bit more forward narrative progression in “…Chicken,” and
especially, there is more tangible hope at the end.
For
in the end, “…Chicken” is both a
comedy about how NOT to live one’s life, and a paean to the saving grace of
friendship - no matter how dysfunctional.