It's 2020, in the midst of a nationwide health crisis. In one conference-call window on our screens is American Lit professor Keith—now middle-aged, divorced, estranged from his grown son, and recently relocated to Manhattan on the eve of his retirement. In the other window is former protegé Ronnie, now a successful young West Coast poet deserving of his former mentor's congratulations. The younger man is gratified, of course, but also suspicious—fifteen years earlier, you see, teacher and student were also lovers. Often playwrights casually impose the label of "one-act play" on mere writing-workshop exercises, but author James Ijames (whose Welsh surname is pronounced to rhyme with "times", by the way) takes no easy short-cuts. What he has crafted is a full-service play, complete with backstory references, plot twists, environmental contexts (note Keith's wall decor and screensaver images), subtextual reversals and everything we expect of a full-length narrative, tidily abbreviated in a twenty-minute package as efficiently as if it were poetry and not prose.
Freeman and Hill likewise have done their homework, making their occupation as "poets" more than just an excuse for elliptical phrasing, but instead delving the reasons that wordsmiths construct their verbal monuments to fleeting emotions. In a time when it can seem like all we have is our memories, isn't a reminder that even long-dormant pasts can blossom into palpable futures just what we need right now?
