David Meth

TO THE DEATH OF MY OWN FAMILY is an intensely dramatic nonlinear play about an Afghan-American woman who returns to Afghanistan to help her father escape, only to witness the carnage of her entire family. Upon her return to the U.S., she is detained, interrogated, and forced to justify her journey in order to reclaim her citizenship. We then learn about a deeper, darker secret that has shadowed the family for many years, but which they do not want to confront until they are forced to confront each other in the face of death.
The play runs about 90 minutes without intermission in 54 pages with a multi-ethnic cast, and it is haunting. With the current state of the world in which the Middle East is in flames, terrorism is a threat in every corner of the globe and everyone is under suspicion. We are all suspect because of how we dress, where we come from, and whether or not the person across from us considers us is American. Maintaining eye contact incites violence.

9/12 begins with a family celebration: an anniversary and the announcement of a young woman’s engagement to be married. It is followed the next day by the unexpected death of that same young woman, Bayan Daoud, a Middle Eastern graduate student whose life exemplifies the dreams of every immigrant, but now portends the disintegration of the U.S. constitution and redefines what it means to be American. When Naomi Leonard, the student’s mentor and a professor at a prestigious New York City university, learns of Bayan’s death, she is unnerved. It can’t be true. Neither can she get any specific information about how it occurred. And as the parents of two college-age children, friends of Bayan, Naomi doesn’t know what to think or say. So her husband Larry, a writer born and raised in Brooklyn, wants to take immediate action and go directly to the dean of her department to discuss it “Brooklyn” style. Instead, Naomi talks him out of it and tells him to go finish his latest novel at the library. On his way, however, Larry chooses to stop at one of his usual haunts to play pool and where he often works out the plot lines of his fiction. Thus begins a journey that never quite gets Larry to his destination. Because of certain books in his backpack on the infrastructure of New York City, which he is using for research on how terrorists could use the Internet to destroy the city, Larry Leonard is detained in some abandoned room not far from the subway platform. He is then interrogated about his extensive travels and teaching in countries in various parts of the world, especially in Asia when he was in the Peace Corps. And Naomi, who was born and raised in Japan, but is a naturalized American with a personal history that does not exactly conform to the pattern of the usual immigrant, is also taken into custody. Within moments, they become the subjects of an intense and secret investigation in the bowels of the New York City subway system where they are cut off from the outside world. Then their lives are completely torn apart: their daughter Mariko, an undergraduate at Brown, and their son, David, a graduate student at Yale, are also whisked away from their studies and brought in for questioning. As a result, the privacy and civil liberties of the Leonard family are decimated in the name of Homeland Security because of circumstances both past and present which, under normal conditions, would not raise questions in a free society, but which now threaten to destroy everything the Leonard family has lived and worked for, and no one in the Leonard family will give in. But also isolated are the interrogators: a senior male agent who spent time, perhaps too much time, fighting in and out of Vietnam; and a black female agent who cannot escape a heritage that she despises. Thus, as the lives of the characters begin to unravel, the layered nuances of a multi-ethnic society reveal a seething unrest that rises to the surface under the false pretenses of a very real threat, and now American citizens are forced to prove they are who they say they are and not traitors.

ARTY'S POOLROOM opens a dark, cavernous stone basement swathed in shadows and bathing in smoke that is lifted in the fluorescent lights of low-hanging lamps over old claw and ball-footed pool tables with leather pockets. In steps Irving Polanski, a “broken down valise”, a high school student indebted to some rather nasty locals for gambling. But Irving carries a heavier burden and introduces one of several overlapping themes in the play: the meaning of life and death/survival and existence—he is the only son of a Holocaust survivor and the last of the bloodline. Should he fail in any way, it is a failure for the generations that died under Hitler, and a failure for generations that he is responsible for bringing into the world.

This is in contrast to the view of the father of “Loose” Larry Leonard, one of Irving’s wise- cracking friends. Ben Leonard died on the operating table while having a blood clot in his leg removed; but he was revived after three or four seconds, and now considers life from a new perspective: he has been given a second chance and is driven to succeed—in business, as he struggles to establish himself on his own; and in family, as he oversees the raising of his three children—while his marriage falls apart in front of the eyes of his eldest son Larry.

Vulnerability is also a theme of the story: Irving is vulnerable with every step he takes. Afraid to go home to face his parents, he rides all night in his friend’s gypsy cab, reducing his father to embarrassing searches in Arty’s, or to sorrowful pleas from the street level stairs. He is bullied by Brute, a massive psychopath who sees himself as a primitive warlord. He is beholden to Jerry, Brute’s older brother and a gambler who preys upon the regulars down at Arty’s, including Irving’s best friend Zimmerman—a 16 year old who can’t get his shoelaces tied right, or his coat buttons lined up. Neither can he keep his mouth closed, no matter how many teeth it costs him; yet, he has the peculiar quality of a visionary who has not yet found his medium.

ARTY’S POOLROOM is alternately a war zone and an escape, but always a place of release, relief and bonding, where the future is being dreamed, and events of change are slowly being acknowledged. Arty is the referee, the soft elderly man and owner of the poolroom who would just like to retire instead of baby-sitting other people’s high school children and delinquents. But he cannot change his course now: he must put up with abuse and snide remarks, or quit and collect unemployment. He is not so old or so soft, however, that he does not fight back. Nor does he lack a sense of humor or wisdom: He admonishes everyone to get out and to stay out—or their lives will turn out to be like his without an education. Only Irving sees him as a success.

ARTY’S POOLROOM is written in fast, lean dialogue—in the quick-talking street language of 60's Brooklyn, where a remark doesn’t go unchallenged and a challenge doesn’t go unanswered. The dialogue is carried on in Arty’s Poolroom by the kids, and in the Old Dutch Coffee Shop by the adults. The conversations overlap, like a thought coming to mind during a discussion, but they never seem to take place directly between father and son who read each other’s mind without being able to speak directly to each other about the issues confronting them: the break up of family as it used to be known—Larry’s parents get divorced; the gradual socialization of drugs— Irving overdoses; the Vietnam war—Zimmerman’s brother returns crippled; and the general inequality of life—Brute, the warrior, never gets drafted.

FIVE CURRIES is a dramatic comedy that takes place in India and the United States. It is about an American man who will die without a kidney transplant; but the waiting list is too long for him to receive one in the United States, and continuing with dialysis for the rest of his life is painful and the only guarantee is that it ends with death. Lonely and burdened with a decision that separates him from his wife, he goes to India where the sale of kidneys is easy to arrange on the black market, and he has no responsibility other than to pay for it. Of course, it is not until he actually arrives in India that he realizes he is in a country and culture so completely alien to him that if anything goes wrong, he has no recourse. But he is there and there is no turning back. Neither can he turn his back on his past, as it all seems to flash before him: all the mistakes he has made, all the opportunities he has missed, all the reasons that could have prevented going to what he considers a “third world country” to stay alive. Now he finds himself not quite stranded, but alone in India, a country of enormous poverty and dramatic contradictions, where the kidney he gets might be delivered in the most modern clinic, but come from a man or woman so desperate that the choice is between selling a child or selling a body organ. Should he care?

Six months later he is at home and fully recovered when there is a knock on the door. A young Indian couple stands before him and claims that the husband has donated the kidney. Or is it the wife? It becomes clear that they both have sold parts of their bodies. Of course, the American man denies knowing anything about it. When the Indian couple provides more details, the man gives in. But how does he know it is actually one of them, despite the large scars they show him to prove it?

Thus, the central theme of the play arises: What difference does it make who gave him the kidney? He went to India on the verge of death and returned with a new life. The Indian couple, desperate for a new life, has sold more than they can afford to sell and borrowed more than they can pay back in order to come to America. How can he refuse? Through this play I hope to dramatize the decisions and conflicts between Americans who have the wealth and luxury to afford medical care, but cannot get it in the United States, and poverty stricken Indians who must sell their own flesh and blood just to live another day. And when seeking or offering help to those in dire need, is it important to know whom the donor and the recipient are? When giving blood to a blood bank, is it necessary to know who will receive it? Must the donor receive personal thanks from the recipient?

This drama is also a comedy because any time cultures are crossed and different languages are used everything that one has previously learned must be disregarded … and this makes for very funny, sometimes embarrassing situations no matter how serious the intent. I know. I have lived in other countries and learned other languages.

Four college students one year away from graduation do what's usual and get together when a surprise from one young woman's finance prompts revelations that upend their three year relationship, uncover secrets from their most beautiful friend, and shock this small group who thought they knew each other well.

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This is a comedy about two very successful young single men who are deciding their futures and whether to include marriage and family in it. The problem: who has to move out of a rent controlled apartment and, oh, who is getting married? Thus begins an assault on who is worthy of these very self-possessed young men and whether they are ready to make a commitment to someone other than each other; what kind of baby they want to raise; and whether or not to use a surrogate from ... where? India.

An intensely dramatic play about love and family betrayal at the time of death, and the ghosts that linger forever.

A young man from India and a young American woman are rehearsing a play about marriage and commitment at a NYC bar when their lives get caught between cultures, confused with the script, and who is actually getting married: the playwright, the director, or the actors.