Estelle Bajou

Bajou writes plays, screenplays, and poetry. Her full-length play, Poetry, was a Finalist in the 2021 ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition. Her feature screenplay of Poetry is a Quarterfinalist in the 2022 ScreenCraft Film Fund. She co-wrote (and starred in) the feature, Person Woman Man Camera TV (forthcoming 2022). Her poetry received a 2021 Pushcart Prize nomination, and is featured in Broad River Review, California Quarterly, Heavy Feather Review, SWIMM, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, I Never Learned to Pray, was Longlisted for the C&R Press Poetry Award and is forthcoming in 2022. Member: The Actor’s Studio Playwrights and Directors Unit, The Dramatists Guild.

Bajou writes plays, screenplays, and poetry. Her full-length play, Poetry, was a Finalist in the 2021 ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition. Her feature screenplay of Poetry is a Quarterfinalist in the 2022 ScreenCraft Film Fund. She co-wrote (and starred in) the feature, Person Woman Man Camera TV (forthcoming 2022). Her poetry received a 2021 Pushcart Prize nomination, and is featured in Broad River Review, California Quarterly, Heavy Feather Review, SWIMM, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, I Never Learned to Pray, was Longlisted for the C&R Press Poetry Award and is forthcoming in 2022. Member: The Actor’s Studio Playwrights and Directors Unit, The Dramatists Guild.

Scripts

Poetry

by Estelle Bajou

Cast Size
6
Genre
dark comedy,
drama,
experimental

LOGLINE: After a fall during a date with a beautiful waitress, an elderly poet must rely on his estranged son and a young friend plagued by disturbing dreams, who form an unexpected attachment while caring for him.

SYNOPSIS: Herbert Englehardt may be 90ish, but the poet and WWII vet still has a sharp tongue and a womanizer’s eye. His best friend, Ethel, a 30ish poet estranged from her father and plagued by...

LOGLINE: After a fall during a date with a beautiful waitress, an elderly poet must rely on his estranged son and a young friend plagued by disturbing dreams, who form an unexpected attachment while caring for him.

SYNOPSIS: Herbert Englehardt may be 90ish, but the poet and WWII vet still has a sharp tongue and a womanizer’s eye. His best friend, Ethel, a 30ish poet estranged from her father and plagued by dreams filled with existential dread, can even rely on him for semi-parental guidance, given he’s got no family to speak of.

Their friendship starts to strain after Herbert works up the courage to ask out the beautiful Veronica, a Venezuelan diner waitress 40ish years his junior. Ethel is immediately suspicious. What the hell does a woman that young and hot want with Herbert?

Meanwhile, in dreamland, Ethel is haunted by a brother she doesn’t have, and a father who’s not quite her father. Brother guy’s a soldier, father guy’s had a stroke, plus electrocuted birds, her brother's Afghani girlfriend, gunfire, and poems.

When the old guy falls during a late-night date with Veronica, Ethel gives the vixen a good tongue-lashing in the hospital waiting room and Veronica lobs her own bomb before walking out: Herbert has a son he never told Ethel about.

In comes Michael, Herbert’s estranged son, a biracial educator contending with a divorce, born after a short affair Herbert had with a much younger woman some 40 years ago.

While looking after Herbert, Ethel and Michael form an unexpected attachment and the line between dreams and the reality of caring for an aging parent begins to blur.

A play about family, mortality, and the disconcerting poetry of dreams.

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