subUrbia by Eric Bogosian

First published: 1995

First produced: 1994, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater of Lincoln Center, New York City

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of work: The 1990’s

Locale: Burnfield, a small Massachusetts town near Boston

Principal Characters:

• Tim Mitchum, a twenty-one-year-old alcoholic, honorably discharged from the Air Force
• Buff Macleod, a twenty-one-year-old man who makes videos on a camcorder he stole
• Jeff Gallagher, a would-be intellectual about to turn twenty-one
• Norman Chaudry, the Pakistani manager of a 7-Eleven convenience store, probably in his thirties
• Pakeeza, Norman’s sister, in her thirties
• Bee-Bee, a twenty-one-year-old woman recently released from a drug rehabilitation facility
• Sooze, a twenty-one-year-old would-be artist who dreams of escaping to New York City
• Pony, a twenty-one-year-old fledgling rock star
• Erica, his publicist, in her late twenties or early thirties

The Play

The headline of Janet Maslin’s review of the film version of subUrbia in The New York Times reads, “Seeking the Meaningful in a Store’s Parking Lot.” This description essentially sums up Eric Bogosian’s play. The author presents six people in their twenties whose major tie is that they attended high school together. Five of the six are aimless and unmotivated. Still in the process of finding themselves, they congregate in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven convenience store run by a brother-sister team from Pakistan, Norman and Pakeeza. They litter the parking lot with trash that reaches monumental proportions as the action of the play mounts. They play boom boxes at ear-shattering volume. Their xenophobia and racism become apparent as their relationship with Norman deteriorates. The men are unrepentant male chauvinists.

The sixth youth, Pony, is making a name for himself as a rock music artist whose recently released album sold more than ninety thousand copies. Another album is planned. In contrast to Buff Macleod, who arrives on the scene on rollerblades, Pony and his publicist, Erica, a pampered, oversexed Californian from Bel Air, arrive in a chauffeur-driven, black stretch limousine. Pony is in town briefly for a gig that his former classmates choose not to attend.

In his review of subUrbia, David Richards calls it a play in which “a lot goes on but nothing happens,” an apt assessment. The play is noisy and active, but Bogosian has purposely and appropriately deprived it of forward thrust. The principals are aimless: drinking, littering the area outside the 7-Eleven with their trash, slinking behind it to the decrepit van they use for their frequent assignations, but always returning to where they were. There is a sense of eternal recurrence in their lives. At times they dream dreams: Sooze of going to New York and of possibly creating the cover for Pony’s next album; Buff of making videos with his stolen camcorder; Jeff of cultivating his intellect even though he has dropped out of college and is now keeping his oar in the academic pond by taking one community college course on the history of Nicaragua.

Juxtaposed to these static characters is Norman, the Pakistani who owns the 7-Eleven outside of which they gather. Norman has his own problems. He does not like black people and has fled from England because the black residents in his neighborhood burned down his store. Still, Norman has ambition and realistic plans: He will soon have a degree in engineering, his passport to leaving behind the tumult that makes his life difficult. His sister is terrified of the situation in which she finds the two of them and, mouthing dialogue in her native Urdu language, begs to get out of what she calls a horrible place.

Bogosian skillfully allows the play to meander about quite aimlessly. Some of the assembled gang go out with Pony in the limousine to get food at a Chinese take-out that stays open late. Others, resentful of Pony’s success, reject the opportunity to ride in the black limousine. When it returns, Buff, who is drunk, has vomited all over the side of it. Cardboard containers in which the Chinese take-out is held accumulate in the already littered parking lot.

The play’s confined setting and slow pace creates the atmosphere of a controlled burn. The tensions present from the beginning escalate substantially with Pony’s arrival because Pony represents what most of the others would like to be. He is successful, even though he is clearly a moderately large fish in rather a small pond. The physical evidence of his success—the stretch limousine and the publicist—put the static status of the others in a perspective that is difficult for them to acknowledge or accept. As the tension grows, the play becomes increasingly dramatic, not through action so much as through the psychological involvement of the principal characters. What Bogosian achieves dramatically is worthy of Anton Chekhov or Franz Kafka at their best.

He ends the play with a conundrum by leading his audience to think that Erica has been murdered. It appears that Tim has killed her, although in actuality Tim spent the night with her in her hotel. Jeff and Buff cannot bring themselves to look in the van, where they expect to find her lifeless body, reflecting their inability to accept reality.

When Erica finally enters, sexually fulfilled and alive enough to grope Buff, they are astounded. Then the real tragedy is revealed: Tim finds Bee-Bee dead on the roof of the 7-Eleven, the victim of a drug overdose.

Dramatic Devices

Bogosian uses confinement as a major device, much as Sartre uses it in No Exit. His principals, unlike Sartre’s, are physically able to leave the parking lot, but they are stuck there just as they are stuck in their town and stuck in their situations. There is no exit for them. The Dumpster that is prominently displayed at the edge of the set is scarcely used. The parking lot gang just throws its trash on the ground, but the Dumpster looms as a symbol of their futility.

In the directions at the beginning of act 1, Bogosian is explicit in indicating every detail of the area outside the 7-Eleven and some details of the inside that are visible through the windows. He states in a production note that the music and clothing styles, because styles frequently change, should be left up to the producer, designer, and actors so that each performance will be as contemporary as possible.

Bogosian’s ensemble approach in this play is reminiscent of most Group Theatre productions of the 1930’s. These plays shunned the star system; instead, seven or eight characters had parts of nearly equal length and importance, as is the case in subUrbia.

This play emphasizes the emptiness and futility of the American suburban lifestyle, particularly for young people. The set is extremely important because, although it is quite open, it simultaneously imprisons. The principals can leave, but where would they go? They live with their families, but they rebel against their living arrangements. The parking lot becomes home to them. The hopelessness of their situations engenders the intense feelings of frustration that erupt into the outbursts that pepper the drama. When these outbursts are over, one might ask, “Was anybody listening? Does anybody care?”

In act 2, Buff tells Bee-Bee how one night he turned on his tape recorder and taped everyone talking. He plans to use some of this dialogue in his video. Actually, the dialogue in subUrbia might have been gleaned in exactly this way. Bogosian captures the precise ways in which his principals speak, which results in strings of profane and obscene utterances that may offend some sensibilities. The dialogue, however, is unfailingly authentic.

Critical Context

SubUrbia was among several new plays produced in 1994 for the Festival of American Plays. An underlying theme of these plays is the futility that was facing youth in the final decade before the millennium. Howard Korder’s The Lights casts an unrelenting beam upon the moral degradation of the city. Michael John La Chiusa’s musical, Hello Again, presents a frenzy of sexuality, reflecting the desperation rather than the joy of sex.

The overwhelming sense of desperation and hopelessness portrayed in subUrbia is akin to much of the substance of such earlier twentieth century plays as Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story (pr. 1959, pb. 1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (pr., pb. 1962); Arthur Miller’s All My Sons (pr., pb. 1947) and Death of a Salesman (pr., pb. 1949); William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba (pr., pb. 1950), Picnic (pr., pb. 1953), and Bus Stop (pr., pb. 1955); and nearly the entire body of Tennessee Williams’s major dramatic productions.

The 1990’s were a time of reflection as both the century and the millennium drew to a close. Society was advancing at breakneck speed, but not everyone could keep pace with it. Much of modern society is closed to people like the five drifters in subUrbia. If there is any doubt about this social exclusion, Bogosian reemphasizes it by recounting Tim’s humiliation during his service in the Air Force.

Sources for Further Study

Brustein, Robert. “subUrbia.” New Republic 210 (June 27, 1994): 28-30.

Guthmann, Edward. “Shooting Straight from Eric Bogosian.” Advocate, December 17, 1991, 86-87.

Kaplan, Eliot. “A Couple of White Guys Sitting Around Talking.” Gentlemen’s Quarterly 60 (July, 1990): 137-141.

McGee, Celia. “The 7-Eleven Philosopher Bogosian Had in Mind.” New York Times, June 26, 1994, p. H-5.

Richards, David. “Aimless Youth, Shouting out Its Angst.” New York Times, May 23, 1994, pp. C-11, C-15.

Simon, John. “subUrbia.” New York 27 (June 6, 1994): 58-59.