{"id":35889,"date":"2017-11-27T11:17:06","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T17:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35889"},"modified":"2018-09-19T09:01:32","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T15:01:32","slug":"read-local-first-matthew-ivan-bennett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/read-local-first-matthew-ivan-bennett\/","title":{"rendered":"READ LOCAL First: Matthew Ivan Bennett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For today\u2019s installment of\u00a0<\/span>READ LOCAL SUNDAY\u00a0<\/strong>we feature Salt Lake City-based\u00a0 Matthew Ivan Bennett, resident playwright at\u00a0Plan-B Theatre Company<\/a>,\u00a0listed by\u00a0American Theater<\/em>\u00a0magazine as one of 14 companies nationwide exemplifying social action and civic engagement.<\/p>\n

A fixture in the local theater scene and beyond, Bennett is currently working on a new play from which we excerpt here a monologue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Excerpt\u00a0(untitled, work in progress)
\n<\/em>by Matthew Ivan Bennett<\/p>\n

SAM<\/strong><\/h4>\n

(at 19 years old)<\/em><\/h4>\n

We go back to her musty basement apartment and she apologizes for the ankle-deep elm leaves on her porch as I crunch through them. She drops her cigarette in a Mason jar and sweeps the leaves aside with her boots and tells me about the time she saw an ethereal black mist in her bedroom in the summer of 2011. How the radio on her window sill cranked up to volume 10 by itself and she sprinted out of her parents\u2019 house. I can hear coughing inside and when we walk in her roommate Marcella and eight friends are smoking a glass bhang with \u201cSugar\u201d written on the tube part in a permanent green cursive. Amberlie does the introductions and everyone seems to nod at me suspiciously under their beanies. I\u2019d smelled pot before but never breathed it. I panic inside, wondering if Amberlie wants to join in and Marcella says they can \u201cload another bowl.\u201d But Amberlie declines.<\/h4>\n

\u201cCome on,\u201d she says, leading me by the hand to a bedroom, her palm impossibly soft against mine. I never lotion.<\/h4>\n

She shuts the door. Stuffs a towel across the bottom.<\/h4>\n

\u201cSorry \u2019bout that.\u201d I shrug. She drops her backpack and syncs her smartphone with a speaker that\u2019s a neon yellow cat head, a cartoon one, and then I can hear fingers on guitar strings, sliding, slow. I don\u2019t know the singer\u2026 I don\u2019t know anything about music, but in four measures, I know Amberlie Short is more complicated than I ever thought.<\/h4>\n

Humbly, I look up and down her long narrow bedroom with painted-white paneling. She\u2019s way more feminine than me, that\u2019s for sure. On a chest of drawers is like a million tubes of lipstick, lined up from cherry red to Voodoo; there\u2019s a filigreed standing mirror leaning against the wall, sticky with hairspray at the top; on a shelf sits a statuette of an Egyptian goddess, curvy and wing\u00e8d and unashamed; there\u2019s a closet bulging with halter-tops and sassy dresses and a sheer nightgown, sea-foam green; she has a coffee-table book called\u00a0Women in Science<\/em>; she has a quote from Marie Curie tacked to the wall: \u201cHave no fear of perfection; you\u2019ll never reach it\u201d; she has a purple vibrator and lube on the bed-stand, half-wrapped in a towel\u2014which makes me study the glow-in-dark stars on the ceiling and Cassiopeia.<\/h4>\n

\u201cCop a squat,\u201d she says and pats the bedspread. I put down my book bag and sit next to her.<\/h4>\n

I ask her, \u201cWhat if your parents came by right now?\u201d<\/h4>\n

\u201cWhat if they did?\u201d she smiles crookedly.<\/h4>\n

\u201cWould they care? About your roommates?\u201d I ask her.<\/h4>\n

Amberlie snorts: \u201cI caught my parents smoking \u2018Js\u2019 in the garage when I was in pigtails. If my dad swung by, he\u2019d probably join them and play his fucking drums.\u201d<\/h4>\n

I blink at her. \u201cWas that hard? Your mom and dad doing drugs?\u201d<\/h4>\n

She smooshes her glossy lips together: \u201cNever thought about it.\u201d<\/h4>\n

I process that as Amberlie scoots back and spreads out on her bed. I\u2019ve never sat on a bed with a friend, or lain on one, and I wonder what the etiquette is. I stay upright.<\/h4>\n

I ask her, \u201cYou know I\u2019m LDS, right?\u201d<\/h4>\n

She laughs. \u201cAre you,\u201d she twinkles at me, and I get this upwell of anger\u2014despite myself. \u2018Cause even with my issues, even though I\u2019d auctioned off my virginity on a couch out of wedlock, a part of me still needs this future where I marry Bradley Hess in the temple and have three plucky children and Stain-Master carpet and kneel together for prayer and read Luke on Christmas Eve. So I say to her, almost seething, \u201cYes, I am.\u201d<\/h4>\n

She goes, \u201cOK. Your path is your path\u2014as long as you want to be on it.\u201d I tell her thanks, too forcefully. But she only stretches, exposing her midriff unselfconsciously, and watches me.<\/h4>\n

I gaze over at the Egyptian goddess. \u201cDo you pray to her?\u201d<\/h4>\n

She ponders awhile. \u201cI don\u2019t literally believe there\u2019s a deity somewhere whose name has two syllables and we somehow know them and they\u2019re \u2018Isis.\u2019 It\u2019s more like\u2026I believe in a feminine power that runs through creation. And a masculine power. I guess a Mormon would call them \u2018Heavenly Parents\u2019? Except I don\u2019t think they\u2019re people.\u201d<\/h4>\n

I say, \u201cYou believe in gods but you don\u2019t think they\u2019re people?\u201d<\/h4>\n

\u201cExactly.\u201d<\/h4>\n

I study the statuette. The long copper-colored legs. \u201cWhat do you think they are? What do you mean by \u2018powers\u2019?\u201d<\/h4>\n

Amberlie yawns. \u201cI mean, we\u2019re made up of other stuff, yeah? The statue comes from clay and we come from clay. Our cells come from chemicals in the soil and they\u2019re filled with rain and salt. All the plants breathe out oxygen, we breathe it in. The electrons,\u00a0pew pew pew<\/em>\u00a0in our brains, they come from outside. The photons!\u2014released from reactions in our muscles\u2014come from the sun.\u201d She wriggles over and takes my hand. She puts it\u2014gently\u2014on her breastbone, watching for the tiniest change in my expression. But my face freezes. I think. I leave my hand where she puts it. \u201cYou feel that?\u201d she says. \u201cThe heat? That\u2019s the sun. Ultimately. It\u2019s only me for a very short time. So there\u2019s us, and the stuff of the universe, which we borrow. I think the God and Goddess are the stuff.\u201d<\/h4>\n

As she says that I feel the U-shape notch at the base of her throat. She lets me.<\/h4>\n

Copyright, Matthew Ivan Bennett, 2017<\/em><\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Scene from the Plan-B Theatre 2015 production of Matthew Ivan Bennett\u2019s \u201cA\/Version\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For today\u2019s installment of\u00a0READ LOCAL SUNDAY\u00a0we feature Salt Lake City-based\u00a0 Matthew Ivan Bennett, resident playwright at\u00a0Plan-B Theatre Company,\u00a0listed by\u00a0American Theater\u00a0magazine as one of 14 companies nationwide exemplifying social action and civic engagement. A fixture in the local theater scene and beyond, Bennett is currently working on a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1566,"featured_media":37768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,2513],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts","category-read-local-first"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/MIB_Headshot-350x233.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-17 02:58:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37770,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35889\/revisions\/37770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}