TITLES

What makes a good title? I have no idea, but I’ve finally settled on a title for my new play that feels right.  This play was inspired by my trip to Mexico City and Teotihuacan last February, where I was struck by  the violent history of both sites—like most major world sites, for that matter—and by the way that different “clans” successively destroy their predecessors and appropriate their property and culture. I wondered what daily life might be like for people in these situations—and in particular what it might be like for gentler, artistic souls. This led to the idea of following one family as it evolved through history, somehow present at many conquests and migrations, right up to our current time and beyond. 

My first working title for this play was MIGRATIONS. My writers’ group felt this wasn’t descriptive enough--and a bit boring, too. It was also pointed out that what the family experiences even more than a series of migrations is a series of conquests, so the title became CONQUESTS AND MIGRATIONS.  This didn’t seem colorful enough to me, so then I tried THE CONQUERING RACE--but people felt this was too suggestive of the Nazis. Then I tried THE CONQUESTS OF IVOR AND IRENE, followed by IVOR THE WARRIOR.  Other possibilities included:

Survival of the Fittest

Ivor and Irene

The Conquests of Ivor and Irene 

Dwellings and Conquests

The Conquering Race

Conquering People

The Warrior Clan

The Evolution of a Warrior

The Warrior’s Family

The Warrior

The Warrior and His Family

The Evolution of Ivor and Irene

The Tale of Ivor and Irene

Ivor and Irene: An Evolution

The Need to Conquer

Groping Toward Survival

Groping Toward Evolution

Unnatural Selection

The Ascent of Man and Woman

Home is Where the Conquest Is

A Home is for the Taking

Conquering Scarsdale

Migrations of the Clan

I Take This Dwelling in the Name of Ivor and Irene

The Dwellings of Ivor and Irene

Where Ivor and Irene Dwell

Where We Dwell

A Dwelling is Not Necessarily a Home

I Take This Dwelling

Next Stop Scarsdale

Dwellings

Portrait of a Family

The Four Realms

Evolution of a Family

Evolution

Appropriation

Anthropology

Migrations of the Heart

Dwellings and Migrations

Occupations

This Dwelling is Occupied

But now the search is over. The new (and I hope final) title is...

THE BEST PLACE WE’VE EVER LIVED

A Fantasy in Two Acts and Four Realms

There’s more to family life than conquests and migrations.