writing samples
An excerpt from "Time Changes Everything"
A play co-authored with John Wooley
Produced throughout Oklahoma 2008-2012
© Thomas Conner & John Wooley
A play co-authored with John Wooley
Produced throughout Oklahoma 2008-2012
© Thomas Conner & John Wooley
This play relates a fictional account of two encounters
between folk balladeer Woody Guthrie and country bandleader Bob Wills.
From Act Two:
BOB
To this land. May it always be yours.
WOODY
(Smiles) And yours, Robert. (They drink. For the first time, we hear voices and laughter from offstage in the ballroom. WOODY raises his glass toward the voices, and back toward stage right.) And yours, good people! (He drinks again.)
BOB
(Refilling their glasses) How’d you come to write that song, Woody?
WOODY
It wasn’t long after we met on that road, believe it or not. I’d been on the radio in Los Ang-ge-leez, and then I moved out to New York City. Everywhere I’d been, they were playin’ that damned song you love so much.
BOB
What song was that?
WOODY
(Singing) “From the mountains to the pray-rees
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America”
WOODY & BOB
(BOB joins in) “My home sweet home!”
BOB
I seem to recall you wasn’t a particular fan of that tune.
WOODY
You shoulda heard the things I had to say about it before the war. But I found myself sittin’ in a flophouse in New York City, and I turn on the radio, and there it is again. First, news about Berlin and its atrocities overseas. Then, ol’ Irving Berlin’s warbling tune and its atrocities on the public airwaves. Once again, there’s work to be done to save this world from fascism — those “storm clouds gathering far across the sea” — and all he wants to sing about is how this is all somehow God’s country. We just have the good fortune to live in it.
BOB
And so you picked up your guitar.
WOODY
I picked up my pencil, and I tried to write something that said this was our land, that it’s our responsibility.
BOB
(Singing, almost to himself) “This land was made for you and me.” Amen, preacher. You certainly stuck to your guns.
WOODY
Well, I’ve sure shot my mouth off a time or two.
BOB
(Chuckling) Ol’ Irving Berlin. Had a little dustup with him myself, long time ago. Over that tune you couldn’t get away from.
WOODY
“San Antonio Rose”?
BOB
None other. We was doing the song as an instrumental, and he said if we’d write some words, he’d put it out from his publishing company. So we did. But when his outfit published it, it wasn’t our tune nor our words!
WOODY
No kiddin’? Why that –
BOB
Yeah. He’d had his boys do a job on it. Make it more what they were used to, I guess. We even tried playin’ it their way, but the folks at our dances kept wantin’ the old one.
WOODY
So what happened?
BOB
Milsten, my lawyer, finally got ‘em thinkin’ straight. They put it out like we’d wrote it, everyone was happy. Even Irving Berlin, ‘cause he made a washtub full of geetus off it.
WOODY
Hmmm.
BOB
Them boys of his tried, I guess. They just didn’t know nothing about Oklahoma and Texas except maybe what they’d seen in movies. It wasn’t home to them like it was to us. Wasn’t real, you know.
between folk balladeer Woody Guthrie and country bandleader Bob Wills.
From Act Two:
BOB
To this land. May it always be yours.
WOODY
(Smiles) And yours, Robert. (They drink. For the first time, we hear voices and laughter from offstage in the ballroom. WOODY raises his glass toward the voices, and back toward stage right.) And yours, good people! (He drinks again.)
BOB
(Refilling their glasses) How’d you come to write that song, Woody?
WOODY
It wasn’t long after we met on that road, believe it or not. I’d been on the radio in Los Ang-ge-leez, and then I moved out to New York City. Everywhere I’d been, they were playin’ that damned song you love so much.
BOB
What song was that?
WOODY
(Singing) “From the mountains to the pray-rees
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America”
WOODY & BOB
(BOB joins in) “My home sweet home!”
BOB
I seem to recall you wasn’t a particular fan of that tune.
WOODY
You shoulda heard the things I had to say about it before the war. But I found myself sittin’ in a flophouse in New York City, and I turn on the radio, and there it is again. First, news about Berlin and its atrocities overseas. Then, ol’ Irving Berlin’s warbling tune and its atrocities on the public airwaves. Once again, there’s work to be done to save this world from fascism — those “storm clouds gathering far across the sea” — and all he wants to sing about is how this is all somehow God’s country. We just have the good fortune to live in it.
BOB
And so you picked up your guitar.
WOODY
I picked up my pencil, and I tried to write something that said this was our land, that it’s our responsibility.
BOB
(Singing, almost to himself) “This land was made for you and me.” Amen, preacher. You certainly stuck to your guns.
WOODY
Well, I’ve sure shot my mouth off a time or two.
BOB
(Chuckling) Ol’ Irving Berlin. Had a little dustup with him myself, long time ago. Over that tune you couldn’t get away from.
WOODY
“San Antonio Rose”?
BOB
None other. We was doing the song as an instrumental, and he said if we’d write some words, he’d put it out from his publishing company. So we did. But when his outfit published it, it wasn’t our tune nor our words!
WOODY
No kiddin’? Why that –
BOB
Yeah. He’d had his boys do a job on it. Make it more what they were used to, I guess. We even tried playin’ it their way, but the folks at our dances kept wantin’ the old one.
WOODY
So what happened?
BOB
Milsten, my lawyer, finally got ‘em thinkin’ straight. They put it out like we’d wrote it, everyone was happy. Even Irving Berlin, ‘cause he made a washtub full of geetus off it.
WOODY
Hmmm.
BOB
Them boys of his tried, I guess. They just didn’t know nothing about Oklahoma and Texas except maybe what they’d seen in movies. It wasn’t home to them like it was to us. Wasn’t real, you know.