The Private Lives of Eskimos
by Ken Urban

Author: Ken Urban

Description: After the sudden death of his sister, a man loses his cell phone and begins a relationship with the mysterious woman who answers his calls

First Produced: 2007
Date Added: 12/17/2011
Content Advisory: Strong language
Keywords: Comedy · Many Locations · Requires/Supports Sophisticated Multimedia/Technical Elements · Surrealism/Absurdism · Technology and the Internet
1 Act, 90 Minutes
3 Females, 2 Males

NOTE: The Private Lives of Eskimos is fully protected by copyright law and is subject to royalty. All inquiries concerning production, publication, reprinting or use of this play in any form should be addressed to

Nick Quinn
the agency (london) ltd
24 pottery lane, holland park
London w11 4lz UK
+44(0)20 7727 1346
nquinn@theagency.co.uk

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Original Production Information

The Private Lives of Eskimos was produced by Open Circle Theatre in Seattle, Washington, with the following cast and credits:

Marvin: Aaron Allshouse
The Woman: Retha Tinker
Christine/Eskimo: Flora McGill
Tom/Cop/Eskimo: Josh Hartvigson
Therapist/Detective/Eskimo: Lisa Viertel

Director: Gary Zinter
Stage Manager: Angel Welter
Set: Ron Sandahl
Lights: Regan MacStravic
Sound: Gary Zinter
Costumes: Rodney Shrader

Earlier versions of The Private Lives of Eskimos were produced by The Committee in New York City and The Mill in Chicago. Thanks to directors Dylan McCullough and Jaclyn Biskup and all the actors who helped with the development of this play.

Review by Martin Denton

At the core of Ken Urban's new play, The Private Lives of Eskimos, is a taut and gripping contemporary techno-thriller—the kind of tale Hitchcock might spin were he alive in our electronic age. Marvin has lost his cell phone. When he dials the number, a strange woman answers. Now, Marvin has a very particular and personal reason why he wants his cell phone back (there's a message on it that he doesn't want to lose). So instead of canceling the phone and getting a new one, he keeps trying to make contact with this mysterious woman, who first says her name is Melissa and later says it's Ann. He thinks he's falling in love with her, because she seems to understand things about him that nobody else understands; things she learned from his cell phone. But she drags him unknowingly into a dangerous web of intrigue, with consequences that could be fatal.

In proper Hitchcockian fashion, Urban spices Marvin's story with an icy girlfriend who refuses to comprehend what Marvin is going through, a clueless pair of bureaucratic airheads (a cop and a co-worker) who similarly provide Marvin with no tangible aid (but do provide some welcome comic relief), and a sexy, mysterious, foreign-seeming Secret Agent ("Call me Priscilla," she tells him, and it's obvious that her name is anything except Priscilla). To give too much more away about the specific events that crash over Marvin like a tidal wave would be to ruin the surprises of The Private Lives of Eskimos; you need to see it for yourself.

This being a Ken Urban play, however, there's more going on here than just a neatly-plotted suspense adventure. Eskimos, for one thing. The place where Marvin's trauma takes him, in his mind, is a black, bleak tundra that's inhabited by Eskimos, Eskimos who speak only in spam. (And indeed, all of their lines are taken from actual spam emails that Urban received or found.) There's a layered metaphor going on here, one part of which works quite beautifully—the profound desolation and aloneness that can follow severe loss—and another that's fascinating but, to my mind, not entirely successful, i.e., the notion that so much of what constitutes communication and connection these days is nothing more than empty air.

The relationship between Marvin and Melissa/Ann/whatever-her-real-name-is is the most interesting aspect of the play. Marvin stands in for all of us who look to our electronic devices for comfort and connection; his identity isn't stolen in any traditional way, but it's essentially usurped, stamped out, by this unknown woman who becomes the only thing real or valuable in Marvin's downward-spiraling life. His desire, and willingness, for a stranger to give him the things he needs at a moment of crisis run counter to anything commonsensical he or we can fathom, and yet they're entirely emblematic of the behavior of countless IM/chat/blog/MySpace/web-a-holics who search for meaning at their keyboards or keypads every day.

Eskimos is directed beautifully and carefully by Dylan McCullough, on a dazzling, spare, and witty set designed by Lee Savage; McCullough navigates the transitions between scenes and locales deftly, and the pace never flags as we're drawn deeper into Marvin's tangled tale and obsession. Three actors—Melissa Miller, Andrew Breving, and Carol Monda—play all of the people that Marvin encounters, including the parka-clad Eskimos who occasionally invade his thoughts. At the center of the play, in a sterling performance of grand controlled intensity, is Michael Tisdale as the increasingly troubled Marvin.

There's probably more weight given to the Eskimo metaphor than the play needs or can properly bear, but otherwise this is a terrific script, one that both entertains and provokes plenty of thought. The scary edges of cyber-/cellular-space are the next frontier for compelling storytelling, and I'm not sure anybody has realized them better on stage so far than Urban does here.

review of the first New York City production in 2007

Excerpt from The Private Lives of Eskimos

TOM

Welcome. Ah. Welcome back. We. Um.
We bought this plant for you. When we heard. But it, uh.
I don’t know
the artificial light or the temperature
y’know how the A/C’s always running
it’s like the effin North Pole in here
plus there’s no sun cause the window’s blocked and
well the plant it didn’t fare so well
you could say it kicked the–
you could say, it, um, um
so.
Welcome back, Marv.

MARVIN

Thanks, Tom. It’s nice. I appreciate it. I do.

TOM

It was a nice plant. Sarah over in finance. She helped.
I mean, we all chipped in.
The stuff online, about your sister, was nice–

MARVIN

Thanks.

Can we–?

TOM

Back to work?

MARVIN

Yup.

TOM

Business as usual?

MARVIN

Yes, thanks.

TOM

You get my text?

MARVIN

No.

TOM

I texted you.

MARVIN

No. Maybe the ring’s off–

He goes for his phone. It’s not there.

MARVIN

My phone–?

Tom returns to his workstation.

TOM

Server’s down.

MARVIN

What?

TOM

My main man Marvin, what can I say? I didn’t believe it the first time either. Entire thing’s fucked. What we supposed to do if the server’s down?

MARVIN

I don’t know.

TOM

Who cares, right? Who cares? We can just read magazines. We can’t work, right, if the server’s down? My office amigo, we can do no work. All we can do is just jerk off, right? And we still get paid. Cause we can’t work.