Death Takes The Elevator

A super short play I wrote for my first creative writing class. Christmas Carol vibes. It's not great, but give me a break. I was 19. But it shows I've always enjoyed melodrama, absurdity, and straightforward moral fables.

Flaunting your power helps you forget, if only for a moment, that you yourself are weak and spineless. That is why you have a secretary, Mr. Merkins, and that is why you will always have a secretary.

Here's some notes I originally included for the professor when I turned the assignment in:

Characters

The play can be seen as more of a short moral fable than a character-rich drama filled with juicy motives complex conflicts. There is a place for that, but this isn’t what I’m trying to do here.

MERKINS

He is a jerk, and the audience should not have any extremely charged or complex feelings about him other than that. The audience should neither enraged at him nor sorry for him, only amused and anticipating his punishment.

REBECCA

Rebecca is one dimensional. She is pathetic, and I gave her as many pathetic traits as I reasonably could. She apologizes constantly. She has money problems. She is clumsy. She has asthma. She cries when threatened. That’s all we know about her. She exists to provide an illustration of the needless cruelty and power-flaunting of Mr. Merkins.