Kevin Clark Poetry
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“There is only one plot: Things are not what they seem.”

—Jim Thompson

“Poetry is a dream dreamed in the presence of reason.”

—Tommaso Ceva

“For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I already knew.”

—Robert Frost

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

—Mark Twain

“Poetry begins where certitude ends.”

—Eavan Boland

“A work of art is never completed, merely abandoned.”

—Paul Valery

“The art of running the mile consists, in essence, of reaching the threshold of consciousness at the instant of breasting the tape.”

—Paul O’Neil

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”

—David Hare

“Let’s play two.”

—Ernie Banks

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”

—Satchell Page

“I like restraint—if doesn’t go too far.”

—Mae West

“In the midst of our happiness we were very pleased.”

—Gertrude Stein

“Keep your eye clear and hit ’em where they ain’t.”

—Wee Willie Keeler

Plays

Kevin Clark and Joe Hewes-Clark

Brick’s Last Call

Play Summary
Cowritten by Kevin and his son, Joe Hewes-Clark, and set in central New Jersey, Brick’s Last Call is a full-length play that tells the story of Brick, a funny but argumentative war veteran who is privately wracked by a decision he made in Vietnam as well as by the recent mysterious death of his older son, Johnny, in Afghanistan. Over the course of two acts and four scenes, the play explores the manner in which unspoken truths from the past seem to take on a will of their own, as if their revelation were always a certainty.

After returning from Vietnam, Brick joined three close friends from high school to play ball before heading to their favorite bar, where he made a fateful choice only one other person knows about. Now the bar is a café where the four semi-retired men meet weekly for comic bantering about war, sports, art, sex, marriage, and masculinity. The play renders the way heterosexual men often employ crude language and gritty wit to express love of friends while negotiating their own homophobia. The café owner—a middle-aged woman also harboring provocative secrets—offers a countering point of view throughout the play. The action rises to a tense climax when Brick invites both Tim and Leo, an African American vet who knew Johnny in Afghanistan, to the café.

The father-and-son team collaborated on the project over the course of a year and a half, communicating primarily on Skype. Joe Hewes-Clark is a playwright, actor, and visual artist living in New York City. Having studied theater at Fordham-Lincoln Center and CCNY, Joe has worked in many stage and short film productions, including Insomnia 8:00AM, There Will Be Snacks, and Polaroid Stories.

Should anyone be interested in staging the play or learning more about it, please contact Kevin to make arrangements.

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