A party, at Buddies in Bad Times

A series of mini-dramas based on public conversations, as overheard and rewritten by local playwright/director Aurora Stewart de Peña.

Overheard at Buddies in Bad Times

Mark wears a daisy behind his ear and glitter around one eye. He passes affordable bottled alcohol to Nina, very tall wearing a leopard print top with tumbling blond hair. Lora is in a somber black dress, pulling back her fingernails. Everyone is in their 30s.

Nina: No, Linda Evangelista is–

Mark: My boyfriend’s from Saint Catharines.

Nina: Well, yes, she was famously quoted as saying “I don’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars a day.”

Lora: And Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington–

Nina: They were the holy trinity.

Lora: Supermodels.

Mark: Before my time, kind of.

Nina: And what I like about her, what I think is important about her is that she never made any pretenses that she was an artist. Never tried to release an album. Never tried to break into acting. No; she was a model. A muse. She stayed at Versailles with Karl Lagerfeld.

Mark: And she didn’t look back.

Lora: Would you?

Mark: From Saint Catharines?

Lora: It’s a strange place. There’s a pile of rubble where Paul Bernardo’s house used to be. It’s just a vacant lot.

Nina: Who would want to live there?

Lora: Exactly.

Mark: There’s a seasonal farming community. Grapes.

____

Aurora Stewart de Peña is half of the theatre company Birdtown & Swanville (the other half is Nika Mistruzzi). You can follow her on Twitter at @Aurorahhh.

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