Monologues19:56 Jan 07 2008
Times Read: 1,302
Calm Down Mother
By Megan Terry
Calm Down Mother is a "transformation play" in which three female actors play multiple roles. A word or a physical gesture serves as the hinge for instantaneous transition from one scene to the next. Here, they become a mother and two daughters washing dishes at a tenement sink. They are having a fight about birth control.
SUE
See, I got enough eggs in me for thirty years, see. That's one a month for thirty years. Twelve times thirty is - 360 eggs. Three hundred and sixty possibilities. Three hundred and sixty babies could be born out of my womb. So, if I don't produce each and every one of them, which is a mathematical impossibility, should I go to hell for that?
So what should I do? Pray and moan on beans? So what should I do, catch eggs and save them in a test tube? And I'm only one bearer of the eggs. You're nineteen. You got a whole year's eggs on me, still. So if God sees fit to flush them down the pipe every month if they don't meet up with an electric male shock, then who the hell are these priests and all to scream about pills and controls? Tell me that! Who the hell are they? They want to save my eggs till they can get around to making them into babies? They can line up and screw in the test tubes. Yeah! That's a sight. They're welcome.
And you two! You sit there in church every Sunday, kneeling and mumbling and believing all that crap that those men tell you, and they don't even know what the hell they're talking about. And I'll be you don't know what I'm talking about. Because I'm the only one in this whole carton of eggs that's got any brains. And I'm taking my pills and I ain't kneeling on any beans or babies' brains to make up for it!
Patient A
By Lee Blessing
MATTHEW
You knew some people who died of AIDS? I knew hundreds. I spent years watching my acquaintances, my friends, my lovers - the one true family of my world, my world - die one by one. And no one in the rest of this country gave a damn. They were happy in fact - either that homosexuals were dying, or that the disease seemed thankfully to be confined to a single, disenfranchised group. Then I got to watch as the rest of America discovered HIV case by heterosexual case - from Ryan White, to Alison Gertz, to you, to Magic Johnson to Aruthur Ashe. I got to watch tributes to the courage of these brave, suffering human beings. Outpourings of affection from people they would never meet, whose thoughts were with them every day, whose eyes filled with tears that these lives could be cut short, that these lives - which were so precious that no amount of publicity was too much - had been mutilated by a virus that was clearly meant for someone else. Then I got to die. In oblivion. Because no matter how many thousands of us die, we will never be visible to you.
Sophistry
By Jonathan Marc Sherman
Xavier (or, Ex), a college boy in a band, starts out the play as a likeable fellow, a young man with passion and conviction. But soon, he begins a downward spiral in the eyes of the viewer. In the first monologue, he speaks to the president of the college about the university's decision to dismiss his favorite philosophy teacher, Whitey McCoy, based on an accusation of sexual misconduct from a "frequent flyer" (acid junkie) named Jack Kahn. He attacks Quintana, the university president, then threatens to his own suit against the school - and against her.
EX:
You're killing this place. Ever since you took over, you've had this conservative plan. Whitey's an aberration. He doesn't fit in with your plan. He's a homosexual. He's an alcoholic. Too bad he's not Jewish and black and crippled as well. You'd really have a field day, then. "So what if he's a tenured professor who's given almost twenty years of his life to this place? So what? He's a 'bad apple'." A healthy society deals with problems. It doesn't toss them away and shut the door. God forbid. It doesn't toss them away and shut the door. God forbid Whitey did what this kid says he did. If so, he's got serious problems and needs help. And treatment. He's given a big chunk of his life to this school, and he should not be bullied, and then ejected as if he were sitting in James Bond's car.
Your blinds are drawn. That's interesting. Because, you know, the blinds have been drawn, the door has been shut, and only you and I have been inside your office. I could walk out of here - you know, I could unzip my pants and run out of here, and I could accuse you of trying to molest me. After all, who's to say you didn't? Am I right? It would be your word against mine. Word Versus Word. Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman can portray us in Word Versus Word. Could make a good flick. A student against a figure-in-power. Sound familiar?
Willy is the joker of the show - he loves Cran-blueberry juice, Jack Daniels, and bong hits. In this scene, he has just kissed his best friend, Ex, and admitted that he is a little nervous about graduating because he doesn't want to "ever have to wear shoes". He is very high when he begins this monologue.
WILLY:
I want to be sixteen years old again.
Ahh. Happiness is... a Cran-Blueberry bong hit. (Pause.) Happiness is... a green and blue round thing called Earth. (Pause.) Happiness is... little me in my old brown snowsuit, going down a white hill on my sled, salty wet snot dripping into my smiling mouth, Mom waiting inside, making fresh hot chocolate with marshmallows... the glare of the sun on the snow almost blinding me... (Pause.)
What the hell am I talking about?
(Beat.) What the hell am I doing in Ex's room... without my shirt?
(Beat.) What the hell?
The Seagull
Anton Chekhov
Treplev has a very complex relationship with his mother, who is a famous actress. He only sees her a few months out of the year now that he is an adult. Treplev wishes to be a playwright, but abhors current standards of theatre. In this monologue, he addresses his uncle, Sorin. At the start of it, he is pulling the petals off of a flower.
TREPLEV:
She loves me, she loves me not; she loves me, she loves me not; she loves me, she loves me not. You see? My mother doesn't love me. Of course not! She wants to live, to love, to wear bright dresses, and here I am, twenty-five years old, a constant reminder that she is no longer young. When I'm not there, she's only thirty-two, but when I am, she's forty-three - and for that, she hates me. Besides, she knows I don't accept the theatre. She loves the theatre, she thinks she is serving humanity and the sacred cause of art, while in my opinion, the theatre of today is hidebound and conventional. When the curtain goes up, and, in a room with three walls and artificial light, those great geniuses, those priests of holy art, show me how people eat, drink, love, walk about, and wear their jackets; when from those banal scenes and phrases they try to fish out a moral - some little moral that is easily grasped and suitable for domestic use; when, in a thousand variations, I am served the same thing over and over and over again - then I flee, as Maupassant fled from the Eiffel Tower, which made his brain reel with vulgarity.
Bargaining
By Kellie Powell
Hannah is an immortal being. She has been dating Ryan for about a year, and she decides to tell him the truth about her immortality, and offer him a chance to live forever.
HANNAH:
Ryan, there's something I want to tell you. (Pause.) I was born in 1931. I never lied to you, I am 23. But I've been 23 since the year 1954. I know this is a lot to take in, and I know we haven't been seeing each other very long, but I wanted to tell you the truth, now, before you got any more invested.
I know, I know. It's impossible, right? No one lives forever? But, sometimes they do. In 1953, I got married. A few weeks after the wedding, I suddenly fell ill. My husband took me to a hospital. I was there for almost a week. I was in so much pain. And no one could say for sure what was wrong. One night, in the hospital, a stranger came to see me. He told the hospital that he was a relative. He told me, "Janie, you're going to die tomorrow." That was my name then, the name I was born with.
This man, the stranger, he offered me a chance to live forever. He said, "You can die tomorrow, or you can live forever. Stay young forever." Well, of course my first thought was, the devil has come to tempt me. He wasn't the devil. And of course, I don't believe in the devil anymore. There are powerful beings on this earth, but man created Satan. And God, for that matter. My point is, this man offered me a chance to live. And I took it.
I will live forever. I will never age. I cannot be harmed, not physically. I can't be hurt by bullets, or knives, or fire, or even explosions. I can't be hurt by diseases - in fact, I can't even catch a cold.
When my husband was 45, he died in a car accident. At his funeral, the stranger came to see me again. He asked me if I wanted to... give up my gift, and... die. I thought about it. But I said, no. I wasn't ready. I knew there was more for me. I have centuries and centuries ahead of me. These first hundred years... are like a drop in the ocean...
My husband never knew about me, and he didn't have a choice. I don't want to go through that again. I don't want to fall in love again for twenty years. Twenty years is... gone in the blink of an eye. I'm looking for someone to love forever. Most people, when they say forever, they mean... well, they don't really mean forever. But I do. I'm falling in love with you, Ryan. And I'm asking you to share forever with me.
[[Bargaining, edited version]]:
Ryan, there’s something I want to tell you. (Pause) I was born in 1931. I never lied to you, I am 23…but I’ve been 23 since the year 1954.
I will live forever; I will never age. I cannot be harmed, not physically. Not by bullets, or knives, or fire. I can’t even catch a cold.
When my husband was 45, he died in a car accident. At his funeral, the stranger who gave me this gift came to see me again, and he asked me if I wanted to…to give it up and…and die. I thought about it, but I said no; I wasn’t ready. I knew there was more for me.
My husband never knew about me, and he didn’t have a choice. I don’t want to go through that again. I don’t want to fall in love for twenty years. Twenty years is...gone in the blink of an eye. I’m looking for someone to love forever. Most people, when they say forever, they mean…well, they don’t really mean forever. But I do. I’m falling in love with you, Ryan. And I’m asking you to share forever with me.
Just Looking
By Kellie Powell
Angela confides in Ryan that Debbie has cheated on Brian with Alex (who Angela has also "hooked up" with), and shares her feelings that everything is "fucked up."
ANGELA:
Things are so amazingly fucked-up right now. I mean, Debbie and Brian were not doing well... It's just, the logic escapes me. She feels like he doesn't trust her, like he's waiting for her to cheat - so she DOES. Instead of saying, "Brian, I don't feel like you trust me," she hooks up with Alex! What THE HELL is THAT? People are fucking INSANE! I...
The thing is, I feel inextricably linked to the whole mess, because I wanted them to be together, to work out, to stay together... And I end up sharing Alex The Walking Bag of Disease with her. I... She's the one who told me to have a fling, anyway! I guess she decided to take her own advice. She... She didn't know what I needed; she knew what she wanted.
I feel responsible for this. How else am I supposed to feel?
(Pause.) I need to stop feeling people's pain for them, trying to step between my friends and their scars.
Richard Fisher's Funeral
By Kellie Powell
Drew attends her estranged father's funeral. When pressured to speak, she resists - at first politely, then firmly, and finally, she erupts with frustration.
DREW:
You don't get it. I've been afraid of my father all my life. My first memory... is the day my brother spilled a can of paint down the stairs. My parents were painting the house. Ricky thought he was helping, but it was too heavy for him, and... paint just went flying, everywhere. I held my breath. I don't know why I thought that would help.
My father put his fist through the wall. I screamed. Ricky and I started crying. And the whole time that he... the whole time, he kept yelling at us to stop crying. I couldn't. I thought he was going to kill us both, and my mother couldn't stop him. I was four years old. Ricky was two.
And I have been living in that hole in the wall, ever since.
Just Looking
By Kellie Powell
JAMIE:
I thought that we talked about this. You don't want me to be your girlfriend. You don't want a girlfriend. You only think you do. You only think you do because it's what you've been taught is right. You know my position on this. I'm not like you. I don't feel compelled to tie a rock to my leg and jump off a cliff. It's nothing personal. You seem like a great guy. But a relationship? Why? We have everything we need, right now. Affection, conversation, sex, and the only kind of devotion that lasts: we're friends. Why would you want to trade that for a hollow sense of security? For some kind of false guarantee? Love is brief. In a couple of months, we'll get bored with each other, and we'll drift apart. No mess, no bullshit. Look, I just don't want us to lie to ourselves, or to each other. The minute I'm your girlfriend, we stop being people to each other and start being obligations. And, I love you too much to let that happen.
A Girl's Guide to Chaos
By Cynthia Heimel
Downtown New York, the 1980s. Cynthia contemplates her future, just after catching her ex-boyfriend and her best friend, making out in her kitchen.
CYNTHIA:
The realization hits me heavily, like a .44 Magnum smashing into my skull. My heart starts beating with a quick dread and my blood freezes in my veins. My stomach does backflips. The ordeal I am about to face is one of the most chilling, grisly, and macabre experiences known to woman.
Dating. I will have to start dating again.
Please, God, no, don't make me do it! I'll be good from now on, I promise! I'll stop feeding the dog hashish! I'll be kind, thoughtful, sober, industrious, anything. But please, God, not the ultimate torture of dating.
That's why I stayed with him for so long, probably. I couldn't stand going through it all again. Sure, he might be a trifle wild and intractable, I kept telling myself, but at least I know I'll get laid tonight, and tomorrow night. At least someone will go to the movies with me and not try to hold my hand.
Hand-holding. The WORST thing about dating. It's the most nerve-wrecking experience! Once I start holding hands, I'm afraid to stop. If I pull my hand away, will he think I'm being cold, or moody? Should I squeeze his hand and kind of wiggle my fingers around suggestively? Or is that too forward? What if my hand is clammy? A clammy hand is more offensive than bad breath or right-wing politics! A clammy hand means you're a lousy lay! Everybody knows that!
And what, dear spiteful God, will I wear?
Closer
By Patrick Marber
London. Alice is a young woman who's lover, Dan, has left her for Anna. Anna left her husband Larry for Dan. Alice is now involved with Larry, but wants Dan back. She has arranged to meet Anna to negotiate. She wants for Anna to leave Dan and go back to Larry, so that she can have Dan back.
ALICE
You should come round one night to Larry's place, come and watch your husband blubbering into his pillow - it might help you develop a conscience. His big thing at the moment is how upset his family are. Apparently, they all worship you, they can't understand why you had to ruin everything.
Why don't you go back to him?
You even look beautiful when you're angry. The Perfect Woman. It's taken me five months to convince myself you're not better than me. Why did you do this?
That's the most stupid expression in the world. 'I fell in love' - as if you had no choice.
There's a moment, there's always a moment; I can do this, I can give in to this or I can resist it. I don't know when your moment was but I bet there was one.
You didn't fall in love, you gave in to temptation.
I chose him. I looked in his briefcase and I found this... sandwich... and I thought, 'I will give all my love to this charming man who cuts off his crusts.'
I didn't fall in love. I chose to.
Do the right thing, Anna.
The Psychic Life of Savages
By Amy Freed
Anne is a disturbed poet who has been hospitalized earlier in the play because of her suicide attempts. This monologue is Scene Five. Anne's bedroom. Anne sits on the bed. Her nightstand holds her vodka bottle and a multitude of prescription bottles. She's drunk, but steady. She is preparing to kill herself.
ANNE:
Most gals would dress in their best black for the most important date of their lives. Not me. For you, Honey, I'm putting on the softest blue dress with a mauve scarf. I've always known that you like the most tender colors.
Just make yourself comfortable. I won't be long. The thing I like about you is, I don't have to maintain any mystery. We've been intimate for years. I've always thought you were a real softy. The one that loved a girl for what she was inside. You really want to get inside. Not just inside the way most guys want to, but you want to tear a girl apart the way other men only dream of. And I'll tell you what. I don't think it will be so bad. Men all say I'll love you when you're old, but they only like to say it to you when you're really young. They can't do it, poor things, they'd like to but they just can't. But you. You've been gentle, you've been slow. But you've rained your constant acid kisses down on my poor flesh since the day I first bloomed. And now I understand that it's because you love me. You love me so truly you've been sucking me out of myself. Blasting my body so that I'll leave it, finally, to be with you. You want to eat me. Well, I surrender. I don't know what it will be like. But I think maybe you know more about this than I.
(Starts swallowing pills by the handful.)
Angels in America
By Tony Kushner
Belize, talking to Louis.
BELIZE:
You know what your problem is, Louis? Your problem is that you are so full of piping hot crap that the mention of your name draws flies.
Up in the air, just like that angel, too far off the earth to pick out the details. Louis and his Big Ideas. Big Ideas are all you love. "America" is what Louis loves. Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It's just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you.
The cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me.
You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy, and mean.
I live in America, Louis, that's hard enough, I don't have to love it. You do that. Everybody's got to love something.
The Angel, who hangs from visible wires while visiting the earth. Here, her chosen prophet, Prior, has just decided to reject her prophecy and return to earth.
THE ANGEL:
You only think you want to return.
Life is a habit with you.
You have not seen what is to come:
We have:
What will the grim Unfolding of these Latter Days bring?
That you or any Being should wish to endure them?
Death moves plenteous than all Heaven has tears to mourn it,
The slow dissolving of the Great Design,
The spiraling apart of the Work of Eternity,
The World and all its beautiful particle logic
All collapsed. All dead, forever,
In starless, moonlorn onyx night.
We are failing, failing,
The Earth and the Angels.
Look up, look up,
It is Not-to-Be Time.
Oh who asks of the Orders Blessing
With Apocalypse Descending?
Who demands: More Life?
When Death like a Protector
Blinds our eyes, shielding from tender nerve
More horror than can be borne.
Let any Being on whom Fortune smiles
Creep away to Death
Before that last dreadful daybreak
When all your ravaging returns to you
With the rising, scorching, unrelenting Sun:
When morning blisters crimson
And bears all life away,
A tidal wave of Protean Fire
That curls around the planet
And bares the Earth clean as bone.
Hannah is a Joe's Mormon mother. After her son calls her in the middle of the night to tell her that he is a homosexual, she sells her house and flies to New York City, and gets lost. She is talking to a raving homeless woman on the streets.
HANNAH:
Excuse me? I said excuse me? Can you tell me where I am? Is this Brooklyn? Do you know of a Pineapple Street? Is there some sort of bus or train or...?
I'm lost, I just arrived from Salt Lake City. I took the bus that I was told to take and I got off - well it was the very last stop, so I had to get off, and I asked the driver was this Brooklyn, and he nodded yes but he was from one of those foreign countries where they think it's good manners to nod at everything even if you have no idea what it is you're nodding at, and in truth I think he spoke no English at all, which I think would make him ineligible for employment on public transportation. The public being English-speaking mostly. Do you speak English?
I was supposed to be met at the airport by my son. He didn't show and I don't wait more than three and three-quarters hours for anyone. I should have been patient, I guess...Is this Brooklyn?
The Bronx!?! Well how in the name of Heaven did I get to the Bronx, when the bus driver said...? Can you just tell me where I...? I don't know what you're...
Shut up. Please. Now I want you to stop jabbering for a minute, and pull your wits together and tell me how to get to Brooklyn. Because you know! And you are going to tell me! Because there is no one else around to tell me and I am wet and cold and I am very angry! So I am sorry you're psychotic but just make the effort! Take a deep breath! DO IT! (Inhales with the crazy woman.) That's good. Now exhale. (Exhales with the crazy woman.) Good. Now. How do I get to Brooklyn?
A little later. Hannah has finally arrived at her destination, only to find that her son is missing and her daughter-in-law has been arrested. She is talking on the phone with an unheard voice.
HANNAH:
Pitt residence. No. He's out. No, I have no idea where he is. I have no idea. I have no idea. No idea. No. No. This is his mother.
OH MY LORD! Is she...? You... Wait, officer, I don't... You found her in the... Prospect Park? I don't... She what? A pine tree? Why on earth would she chew down a...?
(Cross.) Well you have no business laughing about it, so you can stop that right now, that's ugly.
I don't know where that is, I just arrived from Salt Lake and I barely found Brooklyn. I'll take a... a taxicab. Well yes of course right now! No. No hospital. We don't need any of that. She's not insane, she's just... peculiar. Tell her to behave. Tell her... Tell her Mother Pitt is coming. (Hangs up.)
Harper is a sad Mormon Valium addict. In this monologue she is listening to the radio and talking to herself, as she often does.
HARPER:
People who are lonely, people left alone, sit talking nonsense to the air, imagining... beautiful systems dying, old fixed orders spiraling apart... When you look at the ozone layer, from outside, from a spaceship, it looks like a pale blue halo, a gentle, shimmering aureole encircling the atmosphere, encircling the earth. Thirty miles above our heads, a thin layer of three-atom oxygen molecules, product of photosynthesis, which explains the fussy vegetable preference for visible light, its rejection of darker rays and emanations. Danger from without. It's a kind of gift from God, the crowning touch to the creation of the world: guardian angels, hands linked, make a spherical net, a blue-green nesting orb, a shell of safety for life itself. But everywhere, things are collapsing, lies surfacing, systems of defense giving way...This is why, Joe, this is why I shouldn't be left alone...
I'd like to go traveling. Leave you behind to worry. I'll send postcards with strange stamps and tantalizing messages on the back. "Later maybe." "Nevermore..."
I'm undecided. I feel...like something's going to give. It's 1985. Fifteen years till the third millenium. Maybe Christ will come again. Or maybe troubles will come, and the sky will collapse and there will be terrible rains and showers of poison light, or maybe my life is really fine, maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise, or maybe not, maybe it's even worse than I know, maybe...I want to know, maybe I don't. The suspense...it's killing me...
Harper and Prior meet in Heaven. Prior is told that he can choose whether or not he wants to return to Earth. Harper isn't really sure how she got there.
HARPER:
I know. Heaven is depressing, full of dead people and all, but life...
It's all a matter of the opposable thumb and forefinger; not of the hand but of the heart; we grab hold like nobody's business, and then we don't seem to be able to let go. Not letting go deforms you.
But I can't stay. I feel terrible, but I've never felt more alive. I've finally found the secret of all that Mormon energy. Devastation. That's what makes people migrate, build things. Heartbroken people do it, people who have lost love. Because I don't think God loves His people any better than Joe loved me. The string was cut, and off they went.
I have to go now. I'm ready to lose him. Armed with the truth. He's got a sweet hollow center, but he's the nothing man.
I hope you come back. Look at this place. Can you imagine spending eternity here?
Harper, on a plane, after leaving Joe for good.
HARPER:
Night flight to San Francisco. Chase the moon across America.
God! It's been years since I was on a plane!
When we hit 35,000 feet, we'll have hit the tropopause. The great belt of calm air. As close as I'll ever get to the ozone.
I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening...
But I saw something only I could see, because of my astonishing ability to see such things:
Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired.
Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.
At least I think that's so.
Joe is a sensitive Republican Mormon lawyer, who is also a married closet homosexual. It's complicated. Here, he is talking to Harper, his wife, who has recently become convinced that he is gay.
JOE:
I think we ought to pray. Ask God for help. Ask him together. Stop it! Stop it! I'm warning you!
Does it make any difference? That I might be one deep within, no matter how wrong or ugly that thing is, so long as I have fought, with everything I have, to kill it? What do you want from me? What do you want from me, Harper? More than that? For God's sake, there's nothing left, I'm a shell. There's nothing left to kill.
As long as my behavior is what I know it has to be. Decent. Correct. That alone in the eyes of God.
All I will say is that I am a very good man who has worked very hard to become good and you want to destroy that. You want to destroy me, but I am not going to let you do that.
A little later. Joe is still talking to Harper.
JOE:
Please don't. Stay. We can fix it. I pray for that. This is my fault, but I can't correct it. You have to try too...
I pray... I pray for God to crush me, break me up into little pieces and start all over again.
I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I'd look at twenty times a day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don't really remember the story, or why the wrestling - just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is... a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course... I still dream about it. Many nights. I'm... It's me. In that struggle. Fierce and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, and so how could anyone human win, what kind of fight is that? It's not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God's. But you can't not lose.
I'm not going to leave you, Harper.
In this monologue, Joe is talking to Roy, about Harper.
JOE:
The pills were something she started when she miscarried or... no, she took some before that. She had a really bad time at home, when she was a kid, her home was really bad. I think a lot of drinking and physical stuff. She doesn't talk about that, instead she talks about... the sky falling down, people with knives hiding under sofas. Monsters. Mormons. Everyone thinks Mormons don't come from homes like that, we aren't supposed to behave that way, but we do. It's not lying, or being two-faced. Everyone tries to live up to God's strictures... The failure to measure up hits people very hard. From such a strong desire to be good they feel very far from goodness when they fail. What scares me is that maybe what I really love in her is the part of her that's farthest from the light, from God's love, maybe I was drawn to that in the first place. And I'm keeping it alive because I need it.
There are things...I don't know how well we know ourselves. I mean, what if? I know I married her because she...because I loved that she was always wrong, always doing something wrong, like one step out of step. In Salt Lake City that stands out. I never stood out, on the outside, but inside, it was harder...
Later. Joe, who works in the Courts, sits outside eating three hot dogs, drinking Pepto-Bismol and Coke.
JOE:
Um... Yesterday was Sunday... but I've been a little unfocused recently, and I thought it was Monday. So I came here like I was going to work. And the whole place was empty. And at first I couldn't figure out why, and I had this moment of incredible... fear and also... It just flashed through my mind: The whole Hall of Justice, it's empty, it's deserted, it's gone out of business. Forever. The people that make it run have up and abandoned it. I felt that I was going to scream. Not because it was creepy, but because the emptiness felt so fast. And well... good... A happy scream. I just wondered what a thing it would be... if overnight everything you owe anything to...justice, or love, had really gone away. Free. It would be... heartless terror. Yes. Terrible and... Very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk unencumbered into the morning. (Little pause. He looks at the building.) I can't go in there today.
Talking to Louis, who has recently left his boyfriend, Prior, after Prior was diagnosed with AIDS.
JOE:
You don't want to see me anymore.
Louis. Anything. Whatever you want. I can give up anything. My skin. I'm flayed. No past now. I could give up anything. Maybe... in what we've been doing, maybe I'm even infected. I don't want to be. I want to live now. And I can be anything I need to be. And I want to be with you.
You have a good heart and you think the good thing is to be guilty and kind always but it's not always kind to be gentle and soft, there's a genuine violence softness and weakness visit on people. Sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be.
You ought to think about that... You ought to think about... what you're doing to me. No I mean... What you need. Think about what you need. Be brave.
And then you'll come back to me.
Louis's live-in boyfriend, Prior, has been diagnosed with AIDS. Louis is not good with death, he wants more than anything to leave Prior, but, thus far, has been immobilized with guilt.
LOUIS:
Mathilde stitched while William the Conqueror was off to war. She was capable of...more than loyalty. Devotion. She waited for him, she stitched for years. And if he had come back broken and defeated from war, she would have loved him even more. And if he had returned mutilated, ugly, full of infection and horror, she would still have loved him; fed by pity, by a sharing of pain, she would love him even more, and even more, and she would never, never have prayed to God, please let him die if he can't return to me whole and healthy and able to live a normal life...If he had died, she would have buried her heart with him.
So what the hell is wrong with me?
Later, after Louis has left Prior. Louis sits in a coffeeshop with Belize, babbling. This is a politics monologue. I'm not saying it would be easy.
LOUIS:
Why has democracy succeeded in America? Of course, by succeeded, I mean comparatively, not literally, not in the present, but what makes for the prospect of some sort of radical democracy spreading outward and growing up? I mean it's the really hard thing about being Left in this country, the American Left can't help but trip over all these petrified little fetishes: freedom, that's the worst; you know, Jean Kirkpatrick for God's sake, will go on and on about freedom and what does that mean, the word freedom, when she talks about it, or human rights, you have Bush talking about Human rights, and so what are these people talking about, they might as well be talking about the mating habits of Venusians, these people don't begin to know what, ontologically, freedom is or human rights, like they see these bourgeois property-based Rights-of-Man-type rights but that's not enfranchisement, not democracy, not what's implicit, what's potential within the idea, not the idea with blood in it. That's just liberalism, the worst kind of liberalism, really, bourgeois tolerance, and what I think is that what AIDS shows us is the limits of tolerance, that it's not enough to be tolerated, because when the shit hits the fan you find out how much tolerance is worth. Nothing. And underneath all the tolerance is intense, passionate hatred.
Later. Once again talking to Belize.
LOUIS:
You're a nurse! Give me something! I...don't know what to do anymore, I...Last week at work I screwed up the Xerox machine like permanently, and so I...then I tripped on the subway steps and my glasses broke and I cut my forehead, here, see, and now I can't see much and my forehead, it's like the Mark of Cain, stupid, right, but it won't heal and every morning I see and I think, Biblical things, Mark of Cain, Judas Iscariot and his silver and his noose, people who...in betraying what they love betray what's truest in themselves, I feel...nothing but cold for myself, just cold, and every night I miss him, I miss him so much but then...those sores, and the smell, and...where I thought it was going...I could be...I could be sick too, maybe I'm sick too, I don't know...
Belize...Tell him I love him. Can you do that? (Louis puts his head in his hands, inadvertently touching his cut forehead.) OW!!!!!! DAMN!
This is one of Harper's hallucinations. Harper asks a mannequin in a display how people change.
MORMON MOTHER:
It has something to do with God so it's not very nice.
God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching. And then get up. And walk around. Just mangled guts pretending. That's how people change.
I smell a salt wind. Means he's coming back. Then you'll know. Then you'll eat fire.
Prior Walter is a homosexual man, living in New York City in 1985. He has recently been diagnosed with AIDS. He is the hero of this play. In this monologue, he is talking to his live-in boyfriend, Louis.
PRIOR:
One of my ancestors was a ship's captain who made money bringing whale oil to Europe and returning with immigrants - Irish, mostly, packed in tight, so many dollars per head. The last ship he captured foundered off the coast of Nova Scotia in a winter tempest and sank to the bottom. He went down with the ship - La Grande Geste - but his crew took seventy women and kids in the ship's only longboat, this big, open rowboat, and when the weather got too rough, and they thought the boat was overcrowded, the crew started lifting people up and hurling them into the sea. Until the got the ballast right. They walked up and down the longboat, eyes to the waterline, and when the boat rode too low in the water, they'd grab the nearest passenger and throw them into the sea. The boat was leaky, see; seventy people; they arrived in Halifax with nine people on board. (Pause.) I think about that story a lot now. People in a boat, waiting, terrified, while implacable, unsmiling men, irresistibly strong, seize... maybe the person next to you, maybe you, and with no warning at all, with time only for a quick intake of air you are pitched into freezing, turbulent water and salt and darkness to drown.
Prior is speaking to Belize. This is after he sees the Angel for the first time, and after Louis has abandoned him.
PRIOR:
Then I'm crazy! The whole world is, why not me? It's 1986 and there's a plague, half my friends are dead and I'm only thirty-one, every goddamn morning I wake up and I think Louis is next to me in the bed and it takes me long minutes to remember...that this is real, it isn't just an impossible, terrible dream, so maybe, yes, I'm flipping out!
Or maybe I am a prophet. Not just me, all of us who are dying now. Maybe we've caught the virus of prophecy. Be still. Toil no more. Maybe the world has driven God from Heaven, incurred the angels' wrath. I believe I've seen the end of things. And having seen, I'm going blind, as prophets do. It makes a certain sense to me...
Prior, speaking to Louis. In the park, a few days or even weeks after Louis has abandoned Prior, and started seeing Joe. Prior knows that Louis has wasted no time in moving on, while he is dying. Trying to defend himself, Louis says, "He's just company! Companionship."
PRIOR:
Companionship. Oh.
You know just when I think he couldn't possibly say anything to make it worse, he does. Companionship. How good. I wouldn't want you to be lonely!
There are thousands of people in New York City with AIDS, and nearly every one of them is being taken care of by...a friend or by...a lover who has stuck by them through things worse than my...So far. Everyone got that, except me. I got you. Why? What's wrong with me? (Louis has begun to cry.)
Louis? Are you really bruised inside?
Answer me! Inside: Bruises?
Come back to me when they're visible! I want to see black and blue, Louis, I want to see blood. Because I can't believe you even have blood in your veins till you show it to me. So don't come near me again, unless you've got something to show!
In Heaven. Prior has been told by the Angel that he can choose whether or not to return to Earth. He chooses yes, but she argues with him. He defends his decision, and offers a suggestion for what the Angels should do if the God who abandoned them should ever return.
PRIOR:
But still. Still. Bless me anyway.
I want more life. I can't help myself. I do.
I've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much, much worse, but...You see them living anyway.
When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough, so inadequate, but...Bless me anyway. I want more life.
God isn't coming back. And even if He did...If He ever did come back, if He ever dared to show his face in the Garden again...If after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of this terrible century He returned, to see how much suffering his abandonment had created, if He ever returns, you should sue the bastard. That's my only contribution to all this Theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare He!
This is the opening of the play. The last days of October, a funeral. Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz alone onstage with a small coffin. The Rabbi speaks sonorously, with a heavy Eastern European accent, unapologetically consulting a sheet of notes for the family names.
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ:
Hello and good morning. I am Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz of the Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews. We are here this morning to pay respects at the passing of Sarah Ironson, devoted wife of Benjamin Ironson, also deceased, loving and caring mother of her sons Morris, Abraham, and Samuel, and her daughters Ester and Rachel; beloved grandmother of Max, Mark, Louis, Lisa, Maria... uh... Lesley, Angela, Doris, Luke, and Eric. (Looks at paper more closely.) Eric? This is a Jewish name? (Shrugs.) Eric. A large and loving family. We assemble that we may mourn collectively this good and righteous woman.
(He looks at the coffin.) This woman. I did not know this woman. I cannot accurately describe her attributes, nor do justice to her dimensions. She was... Well, in the Bronx Home of Aged Hebrews are many like this, the old, and to many I speak but not to be frank with this one. She preferred silence. So I do not know her and yet I know her. She was... not a person but a whole kind of person, the ones who crossed the ocean, who brought with us to America the villages of Russia and Lithuania - and how we struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home, so that you would not grow up here, in this strange place, in the melting pot where nothing melted. Descendants of this immigrant woman, you do not grow up in America, you and your children with the goyische names. You do not live in America. No such place exists. Your clay is the clay of some Litvak shtetl, your air the air of the steppes - because she carried the old world on her back across the ocean, in a boat, and she put it down on Grand Concourse Avenue, or in Flatbrush, and she worked that earth into your bones, and you pass it to your children, this ancient, ancient culture and home.
You can never make that crossing that she made, for such Great Voyages of this world do not any more exist. But every day of your lives the miles that voyage between that place and this one you cross. Every day. You understand me? In you that journey is. So... She was the last of the Mohicans, this one was. Pretty soon... all the old will be dead.
The Rabbi and Sarah Ironson sit in Heaven, playing cards. Prior asks them why everyone in Heaven plays cards.
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ:
(To Prior.) Why? (To Sarah.) Dos goy vil visn far-Vos mir shpiln in kortn. [The goy wants to know why we play cards.]
OK. Cards is strategy but mostly a game of chance. In Heaven, everything is known. To the Great Questions are lying about here like yesterday's newspaper all the answers. So from what comes the pleasures of Paradise? Indeterminacy! Because mister, with the Angels, those makhers, may their names be always worshipped and adored, it's all gloom and doom and give up already. But still there is Accident, in this pack of playing cards, still is there the Unknown, the Future. You understand me? It ain't all so much mechanical as they think.
(Interpreting for Sarah.) She says tell Louis Grandma says: From when he was a boy he was always mixed up. But it's no excuse. He should have visited, but she forgive. Tell him: You should struggle with the Almighty! It's the Jewish way.
Roy Cohn, fictionalized. Famous corrupt lawyer, dying of AIDS. In the first three monologues he is talking to Joe.
ROY:
Please. Let me finish.
Few people know this and I'm telling you this only because...I'm not afraid of death. What can death bring that I haven't faced? I've lived; life is the worst. (Gently mocking himself.) Listen to me, I'm a philosopher.
Joe. You must do this. You must, must, must. Love; that's a trap. Responsibility; that's a trap too. Like a father to a son I tell you this: Life is full of horror; nobody escapes, nobody; save yourself. Whatever pulls on you, whatever needs from you, threatens you. Don't be afraid; people are so afraid; don't be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone...Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let nothing stand in your way.
ROY:
If you want the smoke and puffery you can listen to Kissinger and Schultz and those guys, but if you want to look at the heart of modern conservatism, you look at me. Everyone else has abandoned the struggle, everything nowadays is just sipping tea with Nixon and Mao. That was disgusting, did you see that? Were you born yet?
My generation, we had clarity. Unafraid to look deep into the miasma at the heart of the world, what a pit, what a nightmare is there - I have looked, I have searched all my life for the absolute bottom, and I found it, believe me: Stygian. How tragic, how brutal and short life is. How sinful people are. The immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through whatever we might become. All else is vanity.
I don't know the world anymore.
After I die they'll say it was for the money and the headlines. But it was never the money: it's the moxie that counts. I never wavered. You remember.
You seen a lady around here, dumpy lady, stupid hat? She...Oh boy. Oh boy, no, she's off watching the hearings. Treacherous...
Did you get a blessing from your father before he died? He should have done that. Life. That's what they're supposed to bless. Life.
Roy, recently dead, returns to talk to Joe for a minute.
ROY:
I'm dead Joe. It doesn't matter.
You could have read it in the paper. AIDS. I didn't want you to get the wrong impression.
You feel bad that you beat somebody. He deserved it. Everybody does. Everybody could use a good beating.
Damn. I gotta shuffle off this mortal coil. I hope they have something for me to do in the Great Hereafter, I get bored easy.
You'll find, my friend, that what you love will take you places you never dreamed.
Roy, recently dead, is talking to God Himself, about a paternity suit that God might face if he returns to Heaven after being absent for more than 70 years.
ROY:
Paternity suit? Abandonment? Family court is my particularly metier, I'm an absolute demon with Family Law. Just tell me who the judge is, and what kind of jewelry he likes. If it's a jury, it's harder, juries take more talk but sometimes it's worth it, going jury, for what it saves you in bribes. Yes I will represent you, King of the Universe, yes I will sing and eviscerate, I will bully and seduce, I will win for you and make the plaintiffs, those traitors, wish they had never heard the name of God!
Is it a done deal, are we on? Good, then I gotta start by telling you, you ain't got a case here, you're guilty as hell, no question, you have nothing to plead but not to worry, darling, I will make something up.
Stop Kiss
By Diana Son
Callie's first kiss with her friend Sara results in a gaybashing in the park. Sara is now in a coma. At first, Callie lies about the circumstances of the beating that led to Sara's hospitalization. In scene six, she finally tells the detective investigating the case the whole truth about the night's events.
CALLIE:
We were kissing. It was the first - We didn't know he was there. Until he said something. "Hey, save some of that for me." Sara told him to leave us alone. I couldn't believe she - then he offered to pay us. He said he'd give us fifty bucks if we went to a motel with him and let him watch. He said we could dry hump or whatever we like to do - turns him on just to see it. I grabbed her arm and started walking away. He came after us, called us fucking dykes - pussy-eating dykes. Sara told him to fuck off. I couldn't believe - he came up and punched her in the back, then grabbed her and pulled her away. I yelled for someone to call the police. He pushed her against the building and started banging her head against the building. He told her to watch her cunt-licking mouth. But he had his hand over her jaw, she couldn't - she just made mangled - she was trying to breathe. I came up behind him and grabbed his hair - he turned around and punched me in the stomach. I threw up, it got on him. Sara tried to get away but he grabbed her and started banging her head against his knee. I tried to hold his arms back but he was stronger - he knocked her out. He pushed me to the ground and started kicking me. Someone yelled something - "Cops are coming" - and he took off in the opposite direction. West. He was limping. He hurt his knee. That's what happened.
Cowboy Mouth
By Sam Shepard
Cavale, "a chick who looks like a crow," has kidnapped Slim, "a cat who looks like a coyote," off the streets with an old .45. She wants to make him into a rock star. They've been in this room for too long and they're both mean as snakes. They are currently exchanging childhood memories.
CAVALE:
You're so neat. You're such a neat guy. I wish I woulda known you when I was little. Not real little. But at the age when you start finding out stuff. When I was cracking rocks apart and looking at their sparkles inside. I bet you would've protected me. People were always giving me shit.
Ya know what? Once I was in a play. I was real glad I was in a play 'cause I thought they were just for pretty people and I had my dumb eyepatch and those metal plate shoes to correct my duck foot. It was "The Ugly Ducking" and I really dug that 'cause of the happy ending and shit. And I got to be the ugly duckling and I had to wear some old tattered black cloth and get shit flung at me, but I didn't mind 'cause at the end I'd be that pretty swan and all.
But you know what they did, Slim? At the end of the play I had to kneel on the stage and cover my head with a black shawl and this real pretty blonde-haired girl dressed in a white ballet dress rose up behind me as the swan. It was really shitty, man. I never got to be the fucking swan. I paid all the dues and up rose ballerina Cathy like the North Star. And afterwards all the parents could talk about was how pretty she looked. Boy, I ran to my hideout and cried and cried. The lousy fucks. I wish you were around then. I bet you would've protected me.
Catholic Schoolgirls
By Casey Kurtti
Catholic Schoolgirls is a memory play. Here, Colleen is in the sixth grade, and shares the horrifying experience of being beaten by her teacher just after starting her first period. She talks directly to the audience.
COLLEEN:
Sister told everyone to finish up with their desks and pack up. I felt something. I tried to close my legs so it would stop. I held my stomach in, but it kept leaking. I didn't know the whole thing was so messy. I was afraid to move. I asked Sister if I could go to the bathroom, but she hit me. The boys started coming into the room, but she didn't care. I put my hands over my face, but she kept hitting me. She dug her nails into my side, and pushed me face-first into the blackboard. Everyone was looking at me. Then she made an announcement to the class, that in all her years of teaching, she had never come across someone with such a lack of concern for their personal hygiene. She said these things, right in front of everyone! I thought I was going to die. I ran to the nurse. I never want to go back there again. She wanted me to feel guilty. I do feel guilty. I wish I was dead. I wish I never had to see her, or anyone, ever again. I wish I had never become a woman. I'm no good at it. Is that what you wanted to hear, Sister? All right. I'm no good at it.
As the title states, these are monologues. Transferring from school to home, so yeah...
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