Count Yourself Among the Lucky by Alicia Margarita Olivo

A work exploring the effects of mental health and trauma on relationships, plus three other plays that excited me this week.

Hello friends! This week’s play contains discussions of suicidal ideation and mental health; abstract references to a past childhood sexual assault; and threatened use of a deadly weapon. If any of that is too much for you, I wouldn’t add this one to your TBR. Take care of yourself!

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Usually, as you have probably surmised from reading this publication, I have a hard time being succinct. I’m a certified yapper, long-winded, perhaps a bit rambling even. So, you would probably not be surprised to know that I tend to write full length plays as opposed to one-acts, ten minutes, and monologues. If you looked in my semi-organized and overflowing Google Drive, you would see a lot of plays in general— but yes, mostly full lengths, many of which are unfinished (whoops).

That all changes this year!

After reading Playwrights Teach Playwriting 2 and Audrey Cephaly’s “How To Write the Ten Minute Play”, something just…unlocked in me. I literally have no idea what, or how, but in the past week or so I have written two ten minute plays that I genuinely think are some of the best short work I’ve ever written. And now, I want to just…write a bunch of ten minute plays! I think a big key for me was focusing on a dynamic image, sometimes along with a prompt, and then writing towards that image.

I wrote both plays for submission to short play festivals, so if anything happens with them I’ll let you know!

This week’s play isn’t a ten minute— I would, however, consider it a one act! And since that is, honestly, the next thing I want to tackle, I thought it would be a great one to read this week (plus, it was a subscriber request! Hello out there!).

Here is the summary of Count Yourself Among the Lucky by Alicia Margarita Olivo from NPX:

Belén and Andy, childhood friends-turned-lovers, find themselves stranded off of an abandoned South Texas highway on their way to Mexico. They're trapped in a liminal space, where only the two of them exist without the need for food, water, or sleep. Soon enough, the couple's buried resentments and secrets start to rise, culminating in one last celebration. Inspired by comic book aesthetics, Count Yourself Among the Lucky is a confrontation of violence, trauma, and, of course, love.

Commissioned by AlterTheater Ensemble in San Rafael, CA.

This play, much like a poem, has a structure I would label as ABA— two scenes in the same location and general situation sandwiching a much different scene. We start out with Belén and Andy on the side of a desert road in an ancient truck. Belén leaves to vomit, and we immediately know that something is wrong. We soon learn that the couple is driving down to Belén’s family home in Mexico, where they both have to pretend to be cisgender (they are both nonbinary). As the two discuss the broken down vehicle, we begin to sense a sort of tension between them. Belén asks Andy if they are “tired…of being with [them]” which begins a back and forth that only increases with intensity as the scene continues. They discuss their Mexican culture, their queerness, and their past, leading to a blow out fight ending with Belén admitting what they are planning to do when the couple arrives at their destination— kill their abuser. The two characters separate, Belén wandering into the desert while Andy stays with the car.

The second scene takes place in the past, during the previous night. Andy and Belén are packing up the truck for their trip. Their mutual roommate, Dallas, is assisting. Both of our protagonists have individual discussions with Dallas, revealing a few important secrets: one, that Belén has only told Dallas about their childhood assault, and not Andy; two, that Andy feels that Dallas threatens their relationship with Belén.

The third and final scene takes us back to the liminal space of the desert, where it seems to be perpetually sunrise. Andy confirms this when Belén returns to the truck, when we see projected behind them that Belén has been gone for over eight days. However, neither has experienced hunger, thirst, or exhaustion. Belén walked all the way to their family home, hoping to get their justice, but found every town empty. The couple must confront their traumas and figure out if it is still healthy for them to be in a relationship. The only way out is to truly face themselves.

As a certified enjoyer of The Weird Stuff, I love the strange and eerie place that Belén and Andy find themselves in in this play, not only because of it’s sci-fi vibes, but because it is such as great metaphor for the emotional states of the protagonists. These two people are both stuck in some capacity— stuck inside their own heads, their own pasts, their own traumas, their own ideas of reality. Both need to truly confront themselves (and arguably, each other) in order to become un-stuck. In the world of this play, the universe itself it seems forces these characters to stop and do this work. In reality, of course, it doesn’t happen like this. But often we will come up against a person, event, etc that makes us confront ourselves if we are to move on through life. And that’s what this play, abstractly, presents to us.

We all know of people, I believe, that stay stuck like this forever. They never move on, never grow, never change, and never ever confront themselves. This is a one way ticket to a life of stagnation, and Olivo’s characters discover this by the end of the play. They cannot continue on like this if they ever wish to, well, get better. It’s perhaps a harsh message, but it is one that is necessary, and even beautiful, when you think about it. Life is about change. It’s scary, it’s hard, and damn if we don’t like to try and avoid it sometimes—but it’s inherent to our existence.

As I’ve been known to say, I like a lot of abstract work because in a way, it feels more emotionally close to reality most of the time than realistic work. And this is one of those plays. Olivo stays absolutely true to the emotional life of this work through the implementation of an abstract/speculative concept. As someone who also writes a lot of speculative theater, this is something I also aim to do as a playwright. This play takes a real life situation— a moment in your life of self reflection— and abstracts it in a way that forces the characters to experience the realistic emotional journey of that situation, but dialed up to 11. This is something I will be sure to recall when writing this week.

Here is my review of Count Yourself Among the Lucky on NPX:

A devastating and yet hopeful and beautiful treatise on the effects of mental health and trauma on relationships. Will resonate with any person who had an emotionally destructive break-up as an adult. I think if I saw this live I would be a sobbing mess by the end!

Did you read this play? Do you want to read it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Here are three more plays I added to my library this week:

• THIS HAPPENED ONCE IN THE ROMANCE DEPOT OFF THE 1-87 IN WESTCHESTER by Gina Femia

• Mosque4Mosque by Omer Abbas Salem

• And Tomorrow by Ally Lardner

Want me to read one of these plays? Or, perhaps, do you have another suggestion? Let me know in the comments, or by responding to this article via email or SubStack DM!

Happy theatre-making!

~Brynn