Table Manners in Buenos Aires

Trips can be a wonderful source of inspiration for a playwright. Out of my trip to Mexico City last year came my play, The Best Place I’ve Ever Lived. My trip to Argentina last month inspired me a little differently. Sitting at a cafe (or perhaps more of a lunch restaurant) in Buenos Aires during a rainstorm one afternoon, I couldn’t help watching an older woman having a cup of coffee with a much younger, but bored, woman--her daughter, perhaps? I don't know why the woman fascinated me--her glasses? her old-fashioned hairdo? her judgmental expressions? -- but she did. As I continued to stare at them, I couldn’t help wondering about--and composing--their back story. Who were these people? Why were they here, and what were they doing? What made them the way they appeared to be? I felt compelled to write something about them--especially the older woman. 

Then I remembered that I came up with the idea for my short play, Table Manners, in the same way--staring at some oddly-behaving people in a restaurant in Manhattan. Throughout my stay in Buenos Aires, I kept seeing people in restaurants whose back stories I wondered about. Before you knew it, I had come up with ideas for several such short plays or vignettes and eventually tied them all together into the idea of a play consisting of a series of such stories--in cities around the world. I still like the name Table Manners and think that’s what this longer, episodic play should be called, too. I’ll just have to consider how to avoid confusion with the shorter play with the same title.