Explanation: In my high school College English class, one of the assignments was to write a play. For some reason, my bipolar character FM Zynda was really on my mind, so I decided to write a play about him being sent to a mental institution. I would revisit FM and his manic-depression again in a short story for college called "Black & White." But unlike the serious tone of that, my play, The Pro, was meant to be all in good goofy fun. I was thinking along the lines of Crazy People (which is even mentioned at the end of this piece).
I realize now that this item is extremely stereotypical and offensive, yet like similar problematic works on this site I present it only to offer as complete as possible a collection of my writings. Please be aware that I've dealt with lifelong mental health issues myself and this work was never intended to belittle the mentally ill, though I can't honestly claim it doesn't make light of the subject, as it does. Also know that even at the time of its writing I was fully aware that these are not accurate depictions of mental illness, yet I utilized them anyway. Nowadays, I would be unlikely to write something like this.
Some little things to know:
*The title really has nothing to do with the play. I just wanted a cute "The ___" two-syllable title (inspired by The Ref, a movie I've never seen), and The Pro was the only thing that came to mind. I shoehorned an awkward meaning for the title into the plot, but it's pretty irrelevant.
*Most of the characters were created solely for this play and have never entered into any of my other writing, though I did rather enjoy some of them, particularly Hector, the paranoid schizophrenic, and Leonard, who seems to have no real disorder other than the fact that he can only ever say, "Pez." I did have thoughts of either using the characters in another story, or rewriting The Pro as a novel, but I never did. FM was the only established character who I used in my other fiction.
*Although FM is a rather zany character, his behavior in this play is not representative of his personality; I meant this entire thing to be goofy and not at all like real life. My "real-life" FM would not likely be all goofy-fun in a mental institution, as bipolar disorder is quite serious and not fun.
*The name of the character "Dr. Leviticus" has no meaning whatsoever. I just chose the word because it sounds ominous; it's in no way a comment on the Bible or religion. I say this because the teacher, Mr. Cady, kind of ribbed me about the name being symbolic, when it wasn't. I think I saw the name Conroy written somewhere in school in a way that was funny, so I used it as Dr. Conroy's surname. The character "Billy Lowman" was just a name I thought I had pulled out of thin air until Mr. Cady laughed at that, too, and I later on realized why. Not long before I wrote my play we had read part of Death Of A Salesman, in which the main character is named Willy Loman--we had even discussed how the name could have been a play on the character's depression. Somehow I guess I'd unconsciously taken that name, modified it, and applied it to my depressed character, and Mr. Cady thought I did so on purpose.
As I remember it, the class enjoyed this when it was read aloud (different students playing different parts--the authors weren't allowed to participate). It was graded A+. I had many copies of this play printed out, as some were distributed to the students for reading, and one was loaned to my author aunt to read as well; there were likely also various drafts of it, but I don't know if I kept those. The copy this is taken from is the "final draft" which was actually handed in to the teacher, so it has his writing on it, including the grade, final comments, and notations on the character page, listing which student was to play which character. Corrections are minimal but I'll point out teacher's comments when they're present. This is printed out on continuous-feed paper from our old computer printer, clamped together at the top with a clip. It's dated May 1995, which places it in my senior year of high school--the very month I graduated, in fact, so this must have been our final project. Typed out by hand, so typos may be present.
Front Material
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6
Scene 7
Scene 8
Scene 9/Back Material