DAPHNA I’m sorry but I still, I mean — you can see the Hudson River! From the bathroom! This apartment ... Really, Jonah? Boxers and black socks? Is that supposed to do it for me? Let me — I would never want you to do it for me, you’re my cousin and, gross. Just, like, if you’re at all interested in people of the opposite sex who are not your cousins? [She gestures at his current get-up.] Don’t.

MR. HARMON “My play takes place in real time in one space, so the later I can start the action, the better. Her coming out of the bathroom is the latest possible beginning. I don’t think that first line will ever get a laugh, but it establishes that she doesn’t live there, and it hopefully sends a message about the tone, which is super important in a comedy. Also, when you see a man and a woman dressed like this, you assume they’re romantically involved. So I had to get the cousin reference in there.”

The Good Mother

By Francine Volpe

IN PREVIEWS, opens Nov. 15 at the Acorn Theater at Theater Row.

PREMISE Primping for an evening out, a young mother natters on to her baby sitter.

LARISSA I’ll never forget what else he said to me he said — and it’s a simple thing he said — he said, he said to me anyway he looks at me and he says, he looks at me and he says he goes: “Remember who you are.” ... What do you mean? Who am I? I don’t know who I am, who am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to remember? I’m a child.

MS. VOLPE “This line woke me up in the middle of the night in my freezing loft in Williamsburg. I had a phone conversation with my father that ended with: ‘One more thing: Remember who you are.’ I don’t belabor the first line of my plays. (I mean, I belabor every line I’ve ever written.) But in this play and many others the line presented itself to me. And as a writer you have to assume that something stirring within you is going to stir within others too.”