Two students set out to stretch a canvas one lazy Saturday morning. The scene takes place in a campus art studio at 10AM. The students share a class (World Novel after 1830) with Dr. Edmund Bengel, Jr., Associate Professor of English. As they attempt— and fail—to make a coherent whole of the canvas, the two students entertain themselves by recounting the events of the night before—that is, they talk about girls and the various obstacles they face in attaining their desired end. It remains unclear whether their desired end is a loving relationship built upon mutual respect, or undergraduate sex. The students
also make misguided impersonations of their instructor, whose impressions intensify as they and the canvas unravel. This collaborative play is about the struggle of creation in the face of the countless theories, discourses, and rambles that comfort the confused in the confrontation of this Google-age.

It should be added that the two students’ frustrations grow not only since they cannot manage an upper hand on their task, but because they are also hungry.

Ayman Elmasry was born in Tokyo, Japan on 25 November, 1986. Before settling on
Fairfax, Virginia, he spent a good deal of his childhood in Fayoum, Egypt. Elmasry enjoys marathon running, oil painting, and playing piano. He currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is a Ph.D. candidate in English and Comparative Literature at the University of Virginia. He is also completing his first major work of fiction called The Whiteness of the Wal-Mart, a seven-hundred-plus page romance with introductions into Arab-American society. He does not know when or where or why he will die.

Daniel Joseph Wolfe grew up in West Baltimore with his three brothers, mother and father. To him, his childhood appears as a run of cello playing, bicycle riding, and sailing. After meeting Ayman at college, and having graduated, Daniel now lives in East Baltimore where he paints large format doodles, writes poetry, and applies for graduate school.