Alice’s favorite story from a young age is the one her best friend Via tells about the Great Engine, which only children can see. As an adult, she has a new perspective on both the friendship and the mysterious Engine.
Reina Hardy
Reina Hardy is a playwright from Chicago. Her plays, which usually contain magic and sometimes contain science, have been seen across the country, including at Rorschach Theatre in DC, the Vortex in Austin, and the 2013 NNPN National New Play Showcase. She’s a Michener Fellow at UT Austin, winner of the 2014 KCACTF TYA Prize, finalist for the Terrence McNally Prize and the recipient of an Interact 20/20 Commission. This spring, she has worked on her plays at the Kennedy Center, the Write Now Conference at IRT, Inkwell in DC, and Route 66 in Chicago. She can make things happen with her mind.
Based on “These are the Fables” by The New Pornographers
Bekah: I love the description of the Great Engine. It’s so beautiful and scary and specific. I want to see it and also I’m terrified of it. Well done. Where did the image come from? Is it pure fiction? Feels like the stuff of dreams!
Reina: It came right out of my dreams as a child. My bedroom overlooked a fairly noisy street, and there were several nights when I half-woke to what HAD to be something massive and miraculous passing my window. I would go back to sleep, and in the morning, I would feel like I’d just missed something. My impression of it was pretty vague, but I knew it was mechanical and complicated, like a hyper-trophied version of a one-man band, but on wheels.
I made up the mythology and the physical details for this play. I never made up any details as a kid, because I always thought I might eventually find out for real!
Bekah: Via and Alice’s friendship feels so real and relatable. What do you think it takes to keep a friendship going from childhood into adulthood? How do friendships shift?
Reina: I wish I knew! I’m only in touch with one or two people that I knew as a child, and that sporadically. My enduring friendships are from college and right after. I know a couple people who have childhood friends that are real, true-blue, top of the “friend mountain,” on call for a movie or when you need bail, best-person-at-the-wedding type friends, and I’m jealous.
When you are a child, so many friendships are formed by proximity. I imagine you have to be very lucky to be proximal to someone who can be your friend for life. Via and Alice are a composite of several friendships I had as a little girl, a couple of friendships I had as an adult, and my fall obsession with Elana Ferrante’s Neopolitan trilogy, which is centered around a lifelong friendship and is just the cat’s pajamas.
Bekah: What were you scared of when you were little?
Reina: I was scared of the notion that when no-one was looking at me, my face was distorted into a grotesque claymation parody of itself, and that this was a trait I inherited from my parents.
I don’t think small children should be allowed to watch “Pee Wee Herman’s Great Adventure.”
Bekah: I stole this one from Seamus, because it’s great: what’s another song you would love to write a play about? And, in a sentence, what would it be about?
Reina: “Seven” by Prince. And it’d be about a team of magical girls saving an enchanted kingdom and becoming princesses, only to find out that absolute power corrupts absolutely. This might or might not be something I’m actually doing.
