on a street corner in los angeles, a blind musician plays on as an eclectic group of hardened city natives meet by pure chance. as a dying british backpacker fights to live long enough to see the birth of his child, the lives of a homeless vet, a delusional prostitute actress, a grave digger, a beverly hills runaway, an insomniac bully, and a hollywood screenwriter intersect via love, sex and death.



x street (or) blind men. this doesn't sound like the plot to an x-men movie? pshaw. in the interest of looking for subliminal x's everywhere, i am attempting to draw parallels between weiko's play and the cast and characters of the x-men. impossible? i don't think so. stupid? probably. obviously, if you haven't seen weiko's play you'll have no idea what the hell i'm talking about but hey, do you ever know anyways? so, to continue. warning, spoilers ahead!



we open up at the corner of a flophouse and a bank in los angeles. the soft guitar strumming of a street musician welcomes us to the opening scenes. hello professor x. you are no longer crippled, you are now blind and apparently mute. good thing you're telepathic right? suddenly, our most charismatic hero, the wolverine, appears onstage as a drunk and homeless vietnam war vet. out of shape and paunchy, this particular wolverine is still a very hairy man but he has lost his mind. he is the future confused and befuddled wolverine that he will surely become (a hundred years of drinking and smoking will do that to anyone). crazy to the point of delusionment, he clashes quickly with cal the grave digger. cal is how shall we say, a dimwit. he is slow and stupid and an overall wearing caricature of a man. he digs graves for therapy because all he can do is think about death. and coincidentally, all sabretooth can do is think about killing. but cal is sabretooth declawed. cal is a simpering love sick monster, recklessly head over heels over a delusional prostitute who likes to pretend she's an actress.



this particular "actress" (nikki sky) turns tricks for pay but somehow manages to convince herself that she is not a prostitute. she is a big star waiting for a big break, it just hasn't happened yet. she sleeps with the hollywood producer, she sleeps with cal (for a discount), she would sleep with you if you had thirty dollars. in short, she whores herself out to her advantage and still maintains that she's something she's not, an actress. she is a shape changer, a mystique, lost admist her multiple personalities. and oh yes, in the end, she marries cal. because evil belongs with evil. and apparently, those overalls on cal were just too damn cute to resist.



the tie holding all these disparate stories together is the tale of cyclops and jean grey. or as they are known here, gary and summer, our cute british couple. gary is hurtling towards imminent death and summer has accompanied him to america so that gary can enjoy one last taste of the good life. she carries their unborn child and he carries a disneyland backpack. gary has been uptight his whole life and now, on the verge of ceasing to exist, he lets loose and takes pictures with marilyn monroe's grave and dances slowly to techno music. wild. meanwhile, summer is questioning her love for gary and looking around for other options. she is impressed with cal's animalistic and tender love for nikki. she sees none of this in her own relationship and is quietly waiting for gary to die so that she can tell him how she never really loved him in the first place. while he's on his death bed no less. never say that superheroes pull punches. the ending monologue with summer ripping into her and gary's fabricated love was as explosive as anything generated by flashy special effects. and the kid isn't even his! ouchies.



and what would an x-men play be without storm and rogue? storm is beverly silver, once a goddess of a screen writer, descended upon this street corner in search of "real" stories after being told that she's a burnt out failure whose time has passed. she clearly doesn't belong in the ghetto but she's blinded by her vision of what a hollywood drama should be. she convinces vietnam war vet wolverine that he is a hero and that he can re-enter polite society as a bank teller. sadly, wolverine fails the interview she sets up for him and never gets the job (despite his natural charisma and armani suit) and ends up trying to rob the bank instead. he gets shot (his regenerative powers have waned obviously), beverly feels terrible, but she will commemorate their story in a bawling tear wrenching display of oscar worthiness. hello halle berry!



rogue is our little ingenue running away from her beverly hills home to look for her father. except that her father is already dead and all rogue (amy) can do is leech off of other people's lives. she reads books about dead people (the autobiography of benjamin franklin) and is a talkative sibilant being, trying to force herself into everybody's business. she is yearning for the human touch and offers herself up to our uber-villain, the magneto. magneto or langston, our insomniac bully, is disgruntled and angry all the time. we have no idea why he's so angry until it is revealed that he killed his parents in a plane crash (the master of magnetism losing control in a metal contraption? the irony!). and now he can't sleep, so he must be angry. very loud and angry. langston drags his little mattress around everywhere, trying to get some sleep but the mattress is no protection against the guilty voices in his head. oh if only young rogue would stay with him forever, then he could finally sleep. he needs rogue for his diabolical sleeping plans but no, rogue runs off in an attempt to help wolverine find his missing past (wife, whatever). but she catches up to wolvie only after the attempted bank robbery, when he's already bleeding to death and can only watch as storm holds his inert body and weeps up a [insert five letter synonym for gale here]. what will rogue do now? with no other options, she takes magneto's hand and leaves to pursue some "sleep."



blindstreet, like x-men, is an ensemble piece. disparate personalities and characters joined together to find peace. personal peace. a way to cope with the harsh reality of the real world. the real world hates mutants? band together and fight for your rights. the real world has dealt you a bad hand? band together and share your sorrow. the real world is people at the end of the line, gathered at a street corner, across from a graveyard, trying to bury/resurrect past lives and planning for future lives. the present isn't pretty enough so our heroes must fight for a better tomorrow. this is the world of the x-men. this is the world of blindstreet. this is my interpretation and damn you if you think i'm crazy.