[1] The play focuses on a man named Monty with cerebral palsy who uses a wheelchair, and whose adult daughter takes care of him.
[2] The Rules of Charity, like most of Belluso's work, explores what it means to be disabled or marginalized in modern American society.
He was an advocate for writers, playwrights, and artists with disabilities[3] and used his own personal experience to deepen and drive his own work.
The play also focuses on how one navigates our world when one is an outsider, whether that is because of one's ability or disability, sexuality, religion, or social class.
LH tells Monty that he has invited over the daughter of the building owner Paz, who is a documentary filmmaker.
Paz pitches her documentary to Monty - she wants to write about what she perceives as the enormous and dramatic struggle of disabled people.
They recount the tales of Greek Mythology that LH read about in books that Monty lent him.
Monty describes to LH what the Apothetai was in ancient Greece - the place where disabled babies were left to die.
Monty is sitting on the couch of his apartment while Paz prepares to begin shooting the documentary.
Turning the questions once more back on her, Monty suggests to Paz that she make her film more about the overall concept of charity.
Back in the apartment, Loretta has fed Monty four of his pills to make him sleep while she and Horace have dinner.
Loretta has developed a habit of pretending to be pregnant by sticking a balloon under her shirt, but she tells Horace that they can't afford a real baby.
Later, on a street corner, Loretta, wearing the balloon as a fake pregnant belly, runs into Paz.
Loretta approaches him and tells him that they are going to pretend to be a happily married, pregnant couple in order to sell her father's journal to Joyce.
She tells him that after they do so, he is going to leave the apartment and never come back, calling him a cripple who has made her life even worse.
Angry, Mr. Millicent reveals that he has come to dinner to ask for the pages in Monty's journal in which he wrote about their romantic relationship, claiming that those stories are lies.
She reads out loud the last passage from his journal, where he describes telling her, as a baby, that she will have to learn to swallow her pain.
John Belluso (1969–2006) was a well-established young American playwright whose works focused on the life of people with disabilities in modern America, and how they navigated a world that was generally set against them.
He believed that disability created a perfect mindset for a person to have a yearning to make theatre - as someone who is often looked at and scrutinized by society, he felt that it was a natural feeling for a person to want to turn that mirror back on society, and he chose to do so by creating theatre.
[7] The Rules of Charity, like most of Belluso's work, explores what it means to be disabled or marginalized in modern American society.
Belluso was an advocate for writers, playwrights, and artists with disabilities,[3] and used his own personal experience to deepen and drive his own work.
The premiere production of The Rules of Charity opened on April 23, 2005, at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.
The production was directed by Chris Smith and featured Arwen Anderson, Gabriel Marin, David Warren Keith, Andrew Hurteau, and Sally Clawson.
The production was directed by Ike Schambelan and featured Gregg Mozgala, Christopher Hurt, Pamela Sabaugh, Brian Bielawski, Nicholas Viselli, Hollis Hamilton, and George Ashiotis.
[1] Note: For accessibility reasons, the Off-Broadway production also included an unseen narrator played by Gregg Mozgala.