We’re comedians primarily stand-up but, currently developing our second comedy play “The War on (Father) Christmas” set in The Grin Reaper fantasy universe.
Tessa & Julia are a married couple. Julia is openly transgender.
The Grin Reaper universe consists of all characters from popular mythology & the deities of all major religions, most of whom are off stage and most never mentioned or only obliquely referred to. The characters are 100% dedicated to carrying out out their duties assigned by popular mythology but have real pressures they must overcome to survive. None of the characters have a fixed gender expression unless required by their role. DEATH famously has neither sex nor gender (“Sex is the creation of new life … I am the other end of the process”). The Easter Bunny & The Tooth Fairy are gender fluid. In the Bunny’s case, aggressively so, The Tooth Fairy more subtly, reflecting changes in the characters in popular mythology. Father Christmas is male, but the entity currently in that role was previously Famine and apparently presented as female.
Back story: In “The War on (Father) Christmas”, the off-stage character Hearing Impairment was supposed to be summoned to a team building exercise at Father Christmas’s Conference & Training centre. Thanks to a combination of a lazy assistant who wrote DEAF and the evil demon Autocorrect, DEATH has been summoned instead. HR, the course leader has been kidnapped and she and Father Christmas have despatched an Elf to delay DEATH’s reaching The Fortress of Ingratitude before 8 PM. The Elf may or may not be a member of the revolutionary Elf Liberation Front (ELF) dedicated to freeing the elves from modern slavery in Father Christmas’s toy factory. DEATH wants to free HR so it can leave the North Pole & resume its normal duties guiding the recently deceased into the afterlife.
The scene we would like to test out:
DEATH and the Elf wheel a magic door on stage. We know it’s magic, because it has the words “Magic Door” painted on it in large glitter letters. At first DEATH is suspicious because the paint is fresh and the Elf has glitter under its finger nails but accepts the Elf’s explanation that it was making fairy dust (the major export of Elfland before the race was enslaved).
Then the bit we want to know how well it works starts. DEATH’s ID card should admit it into the fortress, but when it doesn’t open the door DEATH simply walks behind the door, opens it from behind, steps through & the door closes behind it. The Elf and DEATH then have several failed attempts before they manage to co-ordinate well enough for the Elf to get through. The style of this part of the scene reminds me of something The Marx Brothers might have done had they been less talented with a smaller budget.
The full draft script for this scene is on a hidden page
URL: https://thegrinreaper.nz/hidden/twofc-door-skit/
Password: TWoFC-S7