Week #2 The Missing Person- Play

This is an idea I had about a year ago for a play. I guess it could be a movie but I think it works best on stage.

The story follows Aaron Davidson, a young private detective living in San Francisco with his girlfriend. We begin with him being hired by an extremely wealthy woman to find her husband, a man I think I’m going to call Walter. The woman and her husband are members of the highest echelon of San Francisco Society. The woman makes it clear that she doesn’t want the police involved. She gives Aaron all of Walter’s diaries which she says he can read but she doesn’t want to know anything that’s in them.

Reading the diaries Aaron finds out that Walter is living a double and even to some degrees triple life. He is almost an entirely different person depending on where he is and who he’s with. As part of his other life he even has another house up north and a fairly serious drug problem.

Aaron sets about interviewing all the people in Walter’s life who each give him totally different images of the man. We also hear in Aaron’s voice read some excerpts from the diaries showing that Walter also has a very different image of himself than anyone else does.

During the play Aaron should also show a few different sides of himself. Mostly ones he doesn’t show to his girlfriend. I’m not sure what those will be or if I’ll just get rid of this idea and have him be totally blank a’ la Thompson from Citizen Kane.

The last scene in the play takes place a year or so later after Aaron has given up the case. He is up in Oregon on vacation and walks into a bar where he encounters Walter in person for the first time. It is a chance encounter and it’s also the first time we see Walter in person. With the right casting he should be physically very different than any of the impressions we’ve got of him from the people in his life. Aaron confronts him and they have a brief interlude where we learn that Walter simply took off believing he could lead some sort of life free from the constraints of society. I think I’ll have Walter sort of beg Aaron to help him move back and get his old life back. Aaron does not think it’s a good idea. Everyone is doing fine without him.

The idea is obviously very Citizen Kane in structure but the theme is slightly different. It’s about how we are so much more in the eyes of other people than we can ever be totally on our own.

I’ve written a few scenes and I have a basic outline but I really need some input and maybe even someone to help me write some of the dialogue since I’ve never actually written a play before.