Experiment #8 (The Flares of Sunday)

Experiment #8: : Create a setting description/character outline for a play

"The Flares of Sunday"

Setup: A dinner party gone wrong. The King family’s Sunday dinner is turned upside down when the party intended to announce Pammy and Eugene’s engagement is interrupted by the crazy family’s antics. Stanley fights with his overly judgmental father. Helen debates what she wants in between the life she’s built with Stanley or the life she imagines with the much younger milkman. Millicent debates her choice to continue her relationship with Cyril when she sees her former lover fight to have her back at dinner. Pammy wishes for her father’s blessing over her marriage and Eugene wishes the same all while hiding his draft notice from Pammy. Jenny and Henry try a get rich quick scheme and sneak contraband materials (fireworks) into the house all while the party is afoot. All ends in a laugh and a boom.

Setting:  Cincinnati, Ohio, Spring 1942, a house in suburbia in a lower middle-class             neighborhood.

Characters

·      Stanley King –48, a WWI veteran and steel mill worker. Husband of Helen and Father to Millicent, Pammy, and Jenny. Has a very strained relationship with his father and feels the constant pressure of trying to keep his family together.

·      Helen King – 38, Stanley’s wife and stay at home wife and mother who is unhappy in her life and fighting the urge to leave and run off with milkman.

·      Millicent King – 20, eldest daughter torn apart by her perception of love. Her heart broken by Patrick and now has settled for Cyril despite her attraction for the man she cannot have. The most sensible and level headed of the daughters.

·      Pammy King – 18, middle daughter, engaged to Eugene and is in a constant struggle with her father to accept her new fiancé. A known romantic and a stubborn hardhead willing to fight for what she wants.

·      Jenny King – 16, youngest daughter, caught up in the most nonsensical and hilariously high-energy relationship with local bad boy Henry. The most dramatic and charismatic of the daughters

·      Patrick Bateman – 40, Stanley’s playboy boss at the steel mill who is in love with Millicent King despite the 20-year age gap.

·      Eugene Loy – 21, a rather timid young man engaged to Pammy who is keeping the secret of his draft notice. He must juggle meeting the family, trying to impress his new father in law and hiding his notice from his fiancé.

·      Henry Krupp – 18, An overly dramatic con artist and local bad boy who is constantly getting into trouble with Jenny including trying to sneak her in and out of their house to sneak contraband items into her house.

·      Stephan Friedan – 24, a cougar hunting milkman who seems to have an infatuation with Helen and has even suggested that they run away together despite their 14 year age difference.

·      Cyril Evot – A local college student who is in a current relationship with Millicent and seems to a rather jealous type.

·      Archibald King – 75, Stanley’s father and local grouch with not a positive bone in his body. He suffers from occasional dementia and is in a rather strained relationship with his son.

Dorothea – 55, The King’s prudish and rather nosy neighbor who is always prying into the family’s business and always seems to have her eyes on the illegal activity Jenny and Henry bring.