Not Most People

The fundamental subject of Not Most People: The Pornographist's Tale is death as a philosophical problem of which all thinking men and women are conscious. Set in an unidentified state penitentiary, the play dramatizes love as that human possibility which enables us to live fulfilled, purposeful lives despite our mortality and our lack of knowledge of what, if anything, may await us after death. The playwright argues that, given our mortality, no form or expression of human love is obscene or immoral, that, in fact, when confronted by the greatest obscenity we experience, namely death, love is essential to our living happy and healthy lives. This is so precisely because death is both natural and inevitable. It is not a creation of man, and few if any would choose to die had they a choice. This theme is dramatized most vividly through the protagonist of the play, Thomas Wright. The pornographist of the title, Thomas is doing time for having had sexual relations with Kyle, a minor, and for sexually assaulting one of the models for the Web site he had been operating, a site dedicated to the bondage and torture of young men. Questions of morality are raised since Kyle, who celebrates his eighteenth birthday weeks after Thomas' incarceration, loves Thomas and the sexual assault charge is based on perjured testimony. In the course of the action and through the intercession of two strong women, attorney Gloria Pelham and Episcopal priest Susan Murray, most of the major characters experience the transformative power of love. These include Brad, a serial rapist and Thomas' neighbor in an adjacent cell; Vincent, a friend of and former model for Thomas and Vincent's girlfriend Katie; Kyle's mother Colleen Bernard, and Thomas himself. Kyle alone, in his unflinching love, is vindicated.