--- layout: post title: on Words of Love author: Steven date: 2004-04-08 03:45:31 categories: - Musings tags: - writing featured_image: https://www.stevenjaycohen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/wsi-imageoptim-type-banner.jpg --- Words of Love was the first play I ever wrote. It was first performed professionally Off-off-Broadway at The Storefront Theatre back in 1988. Some pieces of the "play" date back to 1985. Romantic Pain is one of those early pieces. It's layout, language, and phrasing were inspired by the work of John Patrick Shanley. Shanley wrote plays like Savage in Limbo and movies like Moonstruck. Try to read this monologue with a blue-collar, italian/jewish, New York (but not Manhattan) twentysomething voice to really hear where I was going with it.