All Aboard!
Thrilled to announce that the maiden voyage of my short play, Aboard Narcissus, will be setting sail as part of the Z Fringe Festival in Virginia Beach on April 6th! Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “The Offshore Pirate,” it’s a treat to see my adaptation move off my laptop and onto the stage.
The production will feature an incredibly talented cast, including:
Cassidy Joy Watkinson as Ardita
Samuel Paul as Farnam
Vincent J. Harrill II as the Pirate
“This is not a story of two on an island, nor concerned primarily with love bred of isolation. It is merely the presentation of two personalities, and its idyllic setting among the palms of the Gulf Stream is quite incidental. Most of us are content to exist and breed and fight for the right to do both, and the dominant idea, the foredoomed attest to control one’s destiny, is reserved for the fortunate or unfortunate few. To me the interesting thing about Ardita is the courage that will tarnish with her beauty and youth.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Offshore Pirate
“The Offshore Pirate” was published 1920 — the same year Fitzgerald proved his financial merit and married his own golden girl, Zelda Sayre. The story first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post before being included in his debut collection, Flappers and Philosophers.
A century later, bored with the temporary lack of in-person theater, I began adapting stories from this collection for the stage. With help of talented friends who workshopped with me over Zoom, I arrived at a one-act play, composed of three vignettes. Aboard Narcissus is the story that ends the show. Fringe is a great way to test what works with an audience; I’m excited to bring that response back into the process as we move to mount the full script.
Flappers and Philosophers is an apt title for Fitzgerald’s collection. Each of the eight stories tell a tale, loosely, of a “flapper” and a “philosopher.” In “The Offshore Pirate,” Fitzgerald introduces us to flapper, Ardita Farnam. If this was Taming of the Shrew, Ardita would be our Kate. Our type-of-Petruchio philosopher enters in the form of a run-away robber who takes control of the Farnam’s yacht. Like Kate, we wonder, can Ardita be tamed?
What interests me about Fitzgerald’s work is his enduring elegant wit, his courage to write plainly, and how he uses characters to explore his themes. Set firmly in his time, his stories reflect his “Lost Generation” of disillusioned youth, post World War I. Still, his work is rich with themes we continue to seek out: the corruption of the American Dream, class and social stratification (particularly wealth, gender, and race), purpose and expectation, love and desire, and the pursuit of beauty. Perhaps Fitzgerald had remained a voice for contemporary youth because we’ve cycled to a new “lost generation” of our own.
For the stage, Aboard Narcissus hopes to share the core of this roaring adventure and to merely present “two personalities.” Perhaps you’ll recognize them.
Hope you can join us!
Aboard Narcissus is performing at The Z Fringe Festival in Virginia Beach on April 6th, 2025.
For ticket information, please visit https://www.zfringe.org/tickets
For more about my writing, visit https://www.gabriellebauman.com/plays
