Plays & Performances, Writing

People Watching

Why

I’ve always been a fan of people watching. Who isn’t? To sit quietly in a park or at a cafe table and watch the world go by, guessing at the lives of those that pass you by. But what about those assumptions we make? What about when someone else’s passing judgments of you have a direct impact on your life?

What

Characters: 3 women, 2 men
Running Time: 100 minutes
Summary: The play is an ensemble piece requiring 5 actors to play 18 different roles. The setting for the play is a busy city park and the action centers on two characters—the young girl Milly and the businessman Phil, who develop a kind of comradeship when Milly loses her mother. As the bond grows between the two and others move in and out of the park, many themes arise including friendship, love, and possession. But the central theme is the idea of people watching; of voyeurism; of making judgments and decisions based on what we see as passive observers.
Recognition:
• Winner of the 10th Annual Emerson College Playwriting Competition, April 2001

When & Where

Availability: Available for performance.
Production History:
• Produced by Emerson College, Boston, MA, directed by Steve Yakutis, April 2001

By Alexis

Alexis Clements is a writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Her creative work has been published, produced, and screened in venues across the US, Europe, and South America. Her feature-length documentary film, All We’ve Got, premiered in the fall of 2019 in New York City and has since screened around the US and internationally. Her play Unknown also premiered in October 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Other plays of hers have been produced, published, and anthologized across the US and the UK over the past two decades. Her prose writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Guardian, Bitch Magazine, American Theatre, The Brooklyn Rail, and Nature, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic. In addition to her writing and filmmaking, she is currently serving on the Executive Board of CLAGS, the Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY), as a Coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and a co-founder of Little Rainbows, a queer story time for children and their caretakers.

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