SCENE: We are in a “Color Me Drunk” franchise located in a strip mall between a Golden Corral and a Micheal’s.
CHARACTERS:
KELLY
THE ONLY MAN
WIFE
PABLO PICASSO
VINCENT VAN GOGH
JACKSON POLLOCK
OTHER WOMEN IN THE CROWD
- Paint Night 1: Pablo Picasso
KELLY:
Good evening painters! My name is Kelly Stevens and we are just pleased as punch- oh, I mean spiked punch- to have you here with us tonight at Color Me Drunk where we combine crafts and alcohol, because what could go wrong? I see a lot of familiar faces out there! Oh, and one fella! That’s great, sir! Thank you for joining us
THE ONLY MAN:
My wife made me do this.
WIFE:
We had a coupon!
KELLY:
Well, that’s great! Happy to have ya, hun. Now as you know by how steep your ticket prices were, this is a very special, three-part master’s series of Color Me Drunk. We have been extremely blessed to have booked three of the most historically influential artists who love alcohol almost as much as we all do, am I right? Our first master needs no introduction, he ushered in new forms of modern painting such as cubism, he was a poet, sculptor, and stage designer, and has one heck of an affinity for the Green Fairy, please give him a warm Color Me Drunk welcome, Mr. Pablo Picasso!
PICASSO:
Ah, hello, hello, my darlings! Wonderful to be here with you! Tonight, we will be copying a rendition of a portrait I completed of Gertrude Stein. But first, absinthe! Now, I know you Americans are not allowed to have the real stuff but don’t worry. I snuck some in for myself.
He takes a BIG pull from a BIG flask, swallows hard, and looks back up kinda goofy.
PICASSO:
Now slightly drunk but also kinda high
Great, so, first, we’re gonna just paint the whooooooole fuckin’ thing blue. Ah wee, excellent, then we’re gonna put some shapes. HELPFUL HINT: Noses are triangles. Op, we need another eyeball! Where’s that guy gonna go? Where’s, where’s he goin’? Watch this!
He closes his eyes and paints. He opens his eyes
Oh, my god, it landed nowhere near the other one!
He laughs that silent kind of laugh where it is so funny, you can even make a sound.
WIFE:
Shouldn’t the eyes be in line with the ears?
PICASSO: Hey.
Hey, you’re pretty. Imma paint you.
He does for a second, and then turns it around. It is a gobbledy gook of visual nonsense. Everyone is very confused.
OTHER WOMAN:
Tilts her head.
No, wait, I see it.
The crowd does the same
CROWD:
Ohhhhhhhh
PICASSO:
See? Visionary. Just paint what the hallucinations look likeand then cash the checks in the morning. Okay, well, “Drink to me, drink to my health. You know I can’t drink anymore.” G’night!
BLACKOUT
2. Paint Night 2: Vincent Van Gogh
KELLY:
Welcome back everyone, I’m glad to see so many of you back after I know there was some concern with our last master of the craft. But, I have a real treat for you tonight. Our artist is a Dutch painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art! His use of broad brush strokes in his most famous works like Starry Night have transformed how artists approach post-impressionist art. He’s also a big fan of absinthe! So much so, that it and the bars he frequented are featured in many of his paintings. Please give a warm Color Me Drunk welcome to Mr. Vincent Van Gogh!
VAN GOGH:
He’s slurry- he’s been out all night.
Good evening, everyone. Today we will be painting a portrait of my dear brother, who has just gotten engaged!
The ladies cheer as he holds up a portrait of his brother.
VAN GOGH:
Yah, yah. Thank you. Like my dear friend, Mr. Picasso, I’ve been raising a few glasses of absinthe in his honor.
*He pours a glass of absinthe*
A toast, to mein brother. Proost.
They all cheers, Van Gogh puts down the glass and picks up the bottle. He chugs it. When he sets it down, he is weeping. These next lines are delivered to the painting as he strokes it.
VAN GOGH:
It’s all good. It’s okay. Nothing will change. Okay, so you all have your paints? Great, oh you know what? We are missing red, that’s my brother’s favorite color. Oh, no red, that’s okay! Mixing paints is part of being an artist. We just use the palette knife- everybody got theirs? Yah, good. Hold it like this. Ma’am, like this. Yah, there you go. Okay! Yah, now we just cut our own ear off.
As he does.
Either one works, doesn’t matter which.
The women are horrified. The only man vomits.
Yah, okay. Ow. Great now we just apply ze red. We can just go ahead and use the ear like un spoonge to apply a happy little splotch of red, right on his traitorous fucking face. Yah, that looks great right there. Okay, und now we will ask for a doggy bag so we can take the ear to a prostitute we met at a hotel.
BLACKOUT
3. Paint Night 3: Jackson Pollock–
KELLY:
Comes in smiling, nervous.
Um. Hi, everyone. Wow, well. Firstly thank you so much for returning and understanding our no returns policy we, we really appreciate that. Um. We have another master painter just….rarin’ to go! We learned our lesson. NO ABSINTHE haha… No, tonight’s painter is not particular at all when it comes to his beverages, he just likes a lot of them. Um, that’s, that’s why we don’t have any beverages left to offer you all. Anyway, the innovator of the “drip painting style,” welcome Mr. Jackson Pollock!
They applaud, Jackson rushes in, kicks the easel over, and starts flinging paint down manically
POLLOCK:
I AM A FUCKNG GENIUS. GIVE ME MONEY
The crowd just looks at him and each other alarmed. He goes to the tip jar. $4? He grabs someone’s purse. He runs off stage.
BLACKOUT
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Allison Vincent is a writer, teacher, and theater maker. She’s a staff contributor for MN Craft Notes and her fiction has been previously published in Roi Fainéant Literary Press and in the Dirty Girls Come Clean Anthology. This summer, her short story, “Bag It Up,” will appear in Unsettling Reads’ Summer Bludgeon anthology. Recently, Allison received an honorable mention in the 90th Annual Writer’s Digest Fiction Contest. She lives in St. Paul, MN with her wife, Leslie, and their dog, Murphy.
Twitter: @AllisonRVincent
Instagram: @alconhamon
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image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 