A...My Name is Alice

A … My Name is Alice conceived by Joan Micklin Silver and Julianne Boyd
Disclaimer: This musical contains a few adult situations which I will skip over since I don’t know what Mrs. Kirkland will say about them or how other people will approach them .I personally found that they were all entertaining after you got past the situation. There is also “colorful” language.
First off, A … My Name is Alice is a musical that is separated into musical numbers with scenes and monologues by different authors. Hence, why the musical was only conceived by Joan Micklin Silver and Julianne Boyd and not written by them. These women came up with the idea but had a lot of help from different people —like Richard LaGravenese and others.

I chose a monologue from this musical to use for my audition for the Fine Arts Center. After spending ample amounts of time reading and rereading the monologue, I developed a desire to read the musical in its entirety . I really didn’t know what to expect from this musical. I only knew that it was an mostly all women musical and that there was a monologue about a girl whose boyfriend broke up with her—the monologue I used.
ACT I:

All Girl Band : The musical begins with a song in which 5 women sing of their dissatisfaction with their lives until they joined an all girl band. One of them memorably sings “If I spent one more day with damn PTA, I would drown in the carpool of life,” (10). When the song is over the women describe themselves in poems and all share the name Alice. Note: there are only five actresses in the whole play and one or two actors when needed.

The next scene- At My Age- begins with two women of very different ages on separate sides of the stage. One is a15 year old and the other an older widow. Both are going on a date. For the 15 year old it is her first date. For the widow it is her first blind date. Both of them are singing about how strange and new this experience of dating is to them. They often share the same thoughts and feelings.

For Women Only #1:one of a series of poems interjected throughout the musical. These poems are all read by the same woman and all have something to do with a woman losing her man. In these poems the woman is always compared to an animal or plant. In this one she compares herself to a parrot.

Trash is about a woman who dreams her life was as exciting as a trash romance novel. She gets her wish fulfilled for a few minutes by a stranger who comes by her office but then he leaves her. She gets the idea from this stranger, to get her boyfriend to read a trash romance novel so he can pick up on her mood.

Good Thing I Learned to Dance is about a woman who always has loved to dance since she was a child. She has gone thru life with no real use for her dancing except at school dances .Finally when she is an adult in the city a stranger gives her the chance she was looking for. She now is something akin to a Jazzercise instructor.

Welcome to Kindergarten Mrs.Johnson, is a parent teacher meeting gone horribly wrong. The teacher reprimands Mrs.Johnson for giving her little girl a good self image, and teaching her how to read. The teacher is tired of the little girl being bright and guilt trips Mrs. Johnson about being a bad mother. By the end of the scene Mrs. Johnson is in tears and leaves horrified while the teacher reverts to icy sweetness and welcomes another victim, I mean mother.

I Sure Like the Boys, is simply a song sung by a young woman who displays the innocent sensuality of someone discovering sex and love. The song is quite beautiful.

Ms.Mae is an older black woman just talking about what she saw last Wednesday. She is at the salon getting her hair done and she tends to ramble and get off topic. Ms.Mae relates about how on the train home a gorgeous young black woman loses her dignity by the power of one man. This man rips off the young woman’s wig leaving her with her naturally short hair and humiliating her in front of everyone. How the man knew the young woman was wearing a wig, no one knows. Ms. Mae felt so bad for the dear but refrained from doing anything because she didn’t know how the girl would react.

Detroit Persons and Educated Feet go together. Both are about a women’s exposition basketball team and everyone on the team is a character. Spike is very sanguine and intelligent. Wanda has no inhibitions about talking of women’s subjects in her broken English. Nadine tops it off with doing time for coke (she is in jail).There are others but these are the main people. They show off their skills in a dance involving basketballs(think High School Musical).
For Women Only #2 is the next one in the series and this time she compares herself to a wilting plant.
The Portrait: a woman muses on the things she has done in her life. She thinks of her mother and how people often compare them to each other. The woman doesn’t think her mom and her are at all alike. Her mom was a lady and she isn’t. The woman at the end of the song starts wishing her mother was there and relates to us how she often dreams of her mother. She wants her mom there with her and she wants her mom to never leave her. It is a heartbreaking song.
Bluer than You is sung by three different women who have problems in their lives and want to sing the blues to express their problems. They have an ongoing competition to prove how bluer they are then each other.


ACT II:
Pretty Young Men is the tale of a few friends (including mom) going to see a ladies only show. At first the mom is extremely uncomfortable but after awhile she joins her friends in whistling at the men. The song goes from being choir style when the women try to behave to sultry rhythm and blues when they get distracted by the men. The women become more comfortable when they recognize some of the other ladies, like Mrs. Shwab the rabbi’s wife. The women agree to come every week.

Demigod: a young woman just got dumped by her boyfriend, Frank, and at first is apologizing to him for her overreaction the day before. She poses a lot of rhetorical questions to him and gets increasingly frustrated –“Do I go and have an affair with O.J Simpson?”(40). She then calms down again and relates to him what happened to her at the laundromat. She saw Frank and heard his voice in the washing machine. It makes her think she might not be handling the break-up very well. So, she gives Frank, her ex, a piece of her mind—“then the most mature thing I could do for you would be to rip your face off,”(41).

The French Monologue and The French Song: a young woman is pretending to be French and sings a song her father taught her. The song is really only a bunch of random well known French phrases and words strung together.

Pay Them No Mind: a woman is telling her significant other to not pay attention to what other people say about them. She tells her significant other to ignore the jokes. They love each other and that is all that matters.

For Women Only #3: this one being the last poem the poet reveals a little more about how her man left her for another woman. This time she compares herself to a dying swan.

Emily the M.B.A: talks about a woman who rose to a certain height in the business ladder and is not satisfied.Emily has a good job and is respected by both sexes but it is not enough. So, she decides to takeover an all women company. Other women tell her to not do it but she doesn’t listen. After the takeover is successful, Emily and her buddies celebrate with alcohol. They drive while drunk and get into an accident. All die.

This is not the end of the musical but I wanted to leave you with an incentive to read it for yourselves. If I gave you the end that would be no fun. Also, what i wrote were in most cases breif overviews of the songs/scenes,so if you want more detail read the musical. I thoroughly enjoyed the musical and I laughed and cried when I read it. I liked the songs for what they say and some are quite touching. Its a great musical to perform in theater group that mainly consists of women. There is also a sequel to this musical.If anyone was wondering, the monologue I used was Demigod --- I love how she must be apologetic then crazy then furious and confident in the space of 2 minutes.
It made me think of possibly reading The Vagina Monologues . I don't know if they are at all alike but both are for women so I should probably enjoy it.

To fully appreciate the musical I recommend looking it up on Youtube.