"Melancholy Play" by Sarah Ruhl

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

Remember that League of Theatre Women Working In New York Right Now that I talked about in the Lucy Thurber, Killers and Other Family blog? Well, this lady is another one of those, probably one of its most famous and founding members. If you’ve never read one of her plays, you’re wrong: go to a bookstore, buy a copy of all of her plays, and read everything she’s ever written right now. Her style is very distinct -- a realm of melodrama that very few writers since Chekhov have actually managed to pull off -- and well worth having in your arsenal.

So without any further ado I present

MELANCHOLY PLAY

by Sarah Ruhl

This is a melancholy little play about melancholy. It’s slightly absurd (or maybe ‘heightened’ is a better way to put it), and highly compelling. It tells the story of Tilly, a bank employee whose melancholy is so severe that everyone she meets falls in love with her -- her therapist, her hairdresser, her tailor, her hairdresser’s girlfriend -- but she’s so melancholy she can’t love them back, or at least not in the way that they wish to be loved. Then, one day, on her birthday, she gathers them all together and feels so much love for how beautiful they are during a game of duck duck goose that she becomes irreversibly happy, and they’re all distraught because the Tilly they loved has gone. Then the hairdresser who was in love with her, Frances, drinks the precious vial of Tilly’s last melancholy tears turns into an almond (okay this one I can’t actually explain, you literally just have to read the play for this to be justified) and they all gather together and travel to the land of melancholy. The end.

… That was a terrible summary. But trust me, it’s amazing.

Sadly

(get it? Melancholy?)

we’re going to be looking at

TILLY

Tilly is melancholy. That’s her defining trait. This is a monologue delivered to Frances and Joan (the hairdresser and the hairdresser’s girlfriend), after Frances has fallen in love with Tilly and brought Tilly home to meet Joan (a nurse). This is a monologue done entirely without irony, or if there is any, it’s a self-reflective sort of irony from Tilly’s perspective, not the actor’s. Sarah Ruhl’s notes in this play say “do not be afraid of sincere melodrama” and I think this monologue is very much the height of that. We have to find Tilly’s melancholy as sexy as Frances and Joan do, or else the play as a whole doesn’t function.

TILLY: That’s funny. Everyone is always asking me: Tilly, are you still in therapy? I say something like: I had a bad day. And they say: Tilly, are you still in therapy? I go to therapy and my therapist falls in love with me. I have to be careful.

JOAN: How so?

(Tilly moves towards the audience

her speech becomes a public speech

stirring music from Julian)

TILLY:

I’m not particularly smart.

I’m not particularly beautiful.

But I suffer so well, and so often.

A stranger sees me cry --

and they see a river they haven’t

swum in --

a river in a foreign country --

so they take off their trousers

and jump in the water.

They take pictures

with a water-proof camera

they dry themselves in the sun.

They’re all dry

and I’m still wet.

Maybe my suffering is from another time.

A time when suffering was sexy.

When the afternoons, and the streets,

were full of rain.

Maybe my tears don’t come from this century.

Maybe I inherited them from old well water.

(the music stops)

Wait.

Am I acting weird?

...So good, and so difficult to pull off.

I wish I’d seen the original production of this play in 2002. But alas, I did not. Enjoy everyone! This will not  be the last Sarah Ruhl play I post up here I’m absolutely certain, but if you’re digging her style, definitely check out some of her other works: Eurydice, In the Next Room (The Vibrator Play), Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Clean House are some of her Broadway-running, Pulitzer Prize nominated plays, and I recommend her translation/adaptation of Uncle Vanya, as well.

Yeah.

Miss Ruhl is the real deal.

Anyway! Good luck! Enjoy! And if you use this monologue read the play and post for us! We’d love to hear from you!

Thanks so much!

Once again, this has been

SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

"Killers and Other Family" by Lucy Thurber

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

(You know, recently it’s been only me so maybe I should kill that.)

(... Eh.)

(Another time, maybe.)

This is one of my favorite current playwrights working today. The current League of Theatre Women Playwrights Working in New York Right Now (as I concisely call them) is super strong and interesting and writing super cool stuff. Annie Baker is one of them, as is this amazing woman: Lucy Thurber. Many of Lucy Thurber’s plays kind of work like: “take someone you probably grew up next door to and then imagine if their lives were super fucked.” Her characters are wounded and dynamic and strong and very, very interesting. I highly recommend not just this play but Ashville and Scarcity, as well. Check her out. It’s real.

KILLERS AND OTHER FAMILY

by Lucy Thurber

This play is about a woman who has finally escaped from her past only to have it walk in her front door. Elizabeth is a Ph.D candidate two weeks from finishing her dissertation, living with her girlfriend, Claire. Elizabeth’s brother, Jeff knocks on the door unexpectedly with their childhood friend Danny in tow. Elizabeth is enraged that Jeff has brought Danny into her home, and it’s revealed that Danny continually raped her when she was younger, and that Jeff knew about this. Jeff begs Elizabeth for money -- the two boys are on the run because Danny has killed a woman, and they’re headed to Mexico to escape. He goes into the bedroom to sleep and Danny and Elizabeth have sex -- the consensuality is confused at best. End Act 1. In Act 2, Claire comes home, surprised to find people in her apartment but thrilled to finally meet Elizabeth’s “family and friends.” She and Danny have a conversation in which she’s revealed to be a suburban child of privilege: a sharp contrast to the rural poverty Elizabeth grew up in. The meeting of the four escalates, and Elizabeth reveals both her past with Danny and what transpired that morning. Claire attempts to leave, and Jeff bars the door as Danny jumps her in jealousy over Elizabeth’s love. Elizabeth pulls him off, calms him down, and finally convinces him to leave and turn himself in. Jeff leaves with him, and Elizabeth and Claire huddle on the couch. End of play.

It’s hard to read

Everyone is desperate

The stakes are very, very high.

So we’re looking at our protagonist

ELIZABETH

Elizabeth is in the middle of a crisis -- she’s managed to wrestle her way out of poverty into education and a life she can be proud of, and her past has waltzed its way into her apartment. She knows at this point that Danny has killed someone, and she’s just revealed to Claire that she has slept with Danny again, earlier that day. Everyone (Jeff, Danny, Claire) is in the room, and tensions are high. Elizabeth loves Danny -- like a smoker who has stopped smoking but suddenly has a cigarette -- her relationship to him is like an addiction that she knows is unhealthy but has no power over once he’s in the room, and it all has to do with her past. Claire has just confronted Elizabeth with a clear question: “What’s going on here?” and “What is the shit going on between you and this guy?”

ELIZABETH: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m gonna make them leave, I promise,I will -- you have to give me a chance. There’s something wrong with me. Can you see? I never did change. I just moved pieces of me around. It all depends on what you present first and how hard you believe in it.

CLAIRE: Elizabeth --

ELIZABETH: Danny likes to play games. Danny always hated that I went to college. He just wanted me home. I liked college, though, it was my favorite time. Of course, I’m having trouble remembering right now --

CLAIRE: Elizabeth what are you talking about?

ELIZABETH: Oh, I’m sorry. I always talk to you in my head. I’ve been talking to you all day and I already explained everything but -- now when you’re here I don’t know how -- He likes to be told stories. That’s how it always starts. When I was little they were only fairy tales from school… Sometimes when I was little and he would sit me on his lap, I’d pretend his face was mine. If you look at us the right way we look just the same. Of course all I really wanted was for him just to hold me. That’s why I didn’t mind when he started kissing me, because I wanted to be held so badly.

(... long break of conversation between the four of them, but I really like this final line…)

ELIZABETH: You know how scary it is to wake up and find out you’re just where you left yourself? Years and years pass and it’s all just the same. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it. I really believed it was impossible for me to do it.

Oof.

I like this monologue. It’s got a good shape to it, is contemporary, and no one knows this play. So good luck! As always, if you use it please buy/read the whole play and post anything you come up with on our page!

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well"

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

Back to Shakespeare! Such a feminist -- at a time where most people couldn’t even read or write, Shakespeare honored his Queen by parading some of the greatest female roles in theatre across his stage. Juliet, Viola, Portia… amazing. This is one of the lesser-known plays with a female lead -- in fact, it’s called one of the “Problem Plays” because it’s hard to figure out if it’s a comedy or not. Definitely a good place to mine if you’re hunting for a solid piece -- there are a couple in this one that are well worth looking at that not many people do. Whenever I do this piece in auditions I get a “Ahhhhh! Nice!” from casting directors who are excited to not see another Lady Anne (we’ll do her later don’t worry).

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

by Willy Shakespeare

Helena, a commoner under the protective, motherly wing of the Countess Rousillion after her father’s death, is in love with the Countess’s son, Bertram. Bertram is kind of a douchebag and isn’t the least bit interested in her because of her low birth. When Bertram goes to Paris to attend the dying King (as is his family duty), Helena follows him, allegedly to cure the King. When she presents herself to the skeptical King as a healer, she sets herself a challenge: if she fails to cure him, he can have her killed, but if she succeeds, she gets to pick a husband from anyone in the court. The King accepts, and when he is cured, Helena chooses Bertram as her husband. Bertram pettily refuses, and the King forces him to marry her, announces that he will not consider her for his wife until she bears his child and his family ring. To escape this happening, he leaves France for war front. Helena, distraught, follows him in disguise. On the warfront she discovers him attempting to seduce the virgin Diana (who will have nothing to do with him). She teams up with Diana to fool Bertram into sleeping with her: Diana agrees to do so, but only in complete darkness and only in exchange for his ring, and Helena takes Diana’s place for the actual deed. The deed being done, Helena becomes pregnant. She then returns to the Countess, who is horrified at what Bertram has done and disowns him in favor of Helena. Helena then fakes her death and Bertram, thinking he is free, returns to his hometown. Finding himself disowned, he attempts to marry another lord’s daughter but Diana exposes him for a fraud and Helena emerges, the bearer of both his ring and his child, as his challenge had stated. Bertram is duly impressed and swears his love to her. And they all live happily ever after. Or something. Bertram’s kind of a dick, Helena’s way too good for him, and they wind up married because Helena’s in love. Ugh.

Moral of the story: You can have anything you want

But please god want the right thing

(or something)

Anyway!

Today we’ll be peering into the psyche of

HELENA

Helena is desperate. Her dad has just died, she’s an orphan with a crazy amount of skill as a healer, fixated on this guy, Bertram. She’s risked life and limb to marry him and come out on top. She’s won. And then, he flees the country and says he’ll never be back until she isn’t there anymore. AND won’t marry her until she does things she can’t possibly do without already being his wife. Because he hates her that much. Ouch, right? But she’s known this -- she knows he doesn’t love her, but that doesn’t change how she feels about him, or how determined she is to make him hers. In this monologue, she’s just gotten the letter from him saying that he won’t consider her his wife unless she has his child and bears his ring -- neither of which he’ll do. His letter ends “till I have no wife, I have nothing in France”

HELENA:

Nothing in France until he has no wife.

Thou shalt have none, Rousillion, none in France

Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is't I

That chase thee from thy country and expose

Those tender limbs of thine to the event

Of the none-sparing war? and is it I

That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou

Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark

Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,

That ride upon the violent speed of fire,

Fly with false aim; move the still-peering air,

That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord.

Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;

Whoever charges on his forward breast,

I am the caitiff that do hold him to't;

And, though I kill him not, I am the cause

His death was so effected: better 'twere

I met the ravin lion when he roar'd

With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere

That all the miseries which nature owes

Were mine at once. No, come thou home, Rousillon,

Whence honour but of danger wins a scar,

As oft it loses all: I will be gone;

My being here it is that holds thee hence:

Shall I stay here to do't? no, no, although

The air of paradise did fan the house

And angels officed all: I will be gone,

That pitiful rumour may report my flight,

To consolate thine ear. Come, night; end, day!

For with the dark, poor thief, I'll steal away.

Poor Helena

:(

This is my go-to Shakespeare piece -- it has all kinds of layers to it: softness and desperation and determination and betrayal and longing… Ugh so good. As much as Helena kind of makes you want to punch her in the face and make her pick literally any other person in the play other than Bertram, the way she loves him is pretty pure and beautiful and full… so I guess that’s cool. Anyway, have fun! And as always, if you choose to use this, read the play and record your piece!

Thanks guys!

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

Dog Sees God by Bert V. Royal

In honor of 'The Peanuts Movie,' here is the classic beloved character, Lucy Van Pelt.

Alright, 'classic' might be stretching it.

'Beloved' even more so.

This is Lucy... all grown up.

'Dog Sees God' is about the Peanuts characters as teenagers.  Snoopy has been put down because he had rabies and killed a little yellow bird, Linus (Van) is a pothead and smoked his blanket, and Lucy (Van's Sister) is in a mental care facility for pyromania. Marcy and Tricia throw a wild party (a brilliant sequence as the characters transition from the traditional Peanuts song and dance into a contemporary, crazy drug and alcohol induced rave.) Beethoven, the social outcast (who is taunted and bullied after being sexually abused by his dad), shows up to the party.  After an altercation with the "cool" kids when Matt (the gang leader) throws him to the ground, CB helps him up and kisses him in front of everyone.

After the party, CB visits Van's Sister at the mental hospital.  In the first half of the scene, he tells her what happened.  She freaks out, but is proud of him "for setting one foot outside the norm and giving no apologies."  In the second half of the scene, CB questions why she lit the little red headed girls' hair on fire.  Van's Sister does everything possible to avoid answering him. Finally, CB gets fed up with her sarcasm and avoidance and starts to walk out.  She finally admits-

I was pregnant.  Don’t worry.  It wasn’t yours.  I had just gotten an abortion the day before and the next day in Biology, we were ironically talking about reproduction.  I’m listening to Miss Rainy talking about fallopian tubes, the uterus, eggs and I’m feeling sick to my stomach already.  Trying to zone out on anything I can.  So I start reading a note over Miss Puritanical Princess’ shoulder and she’s telling her friend “how happy she is that she’s a virgin and that she’s going to stay that way until she gets married and how repulsed she is by all the whores at our school.”  Without thinking, I reached into my pocket for my cute, little, red Bic lighter and lit her cute, little, red hair on fire.  And every day in therapy, they ask me if I’m sorry yet.  And I just can’t be.  No matter how hard I try.  Bitches like that make me sick.  They’ve made me sick.  I am officially sick, psychotic, unrepentant, and unremorseful.  I’ve been branded a sociopath and I have no choice but to believe it.

Hey, blockhead!  You forgot your scarf!

"Blink" by Phil Porter

HI.
IT’S SHANNON.

I don’t remember where I found this play. I think it was one of those trips to the bookstore where I bought something that looked interesting and like it might have a monologue for me. And it did.  It’s a sweet little British play about a boy and a girl and what it means to feel needed.

BLINK

by Phil Porter

This is a two-person play -- one male, one female -- in which each actor plays multiple roles, but primarily the characters of Sophie and Jonah as they work together to tell (and reinact) the story of how they met. Sophie is a white-collar client manager at a tech company whose father has just died, and Jonah is a runaway religious commune child, renting the a floor of her apartment from her. Sophie gets fired from her job for a “lack of visibility,” and begins to struggle with the idea of not being seen. Finally, Sophie anonymously sends Jonah a screen, connected to a camera that watches her. He has no idea that she knows it exists, as she never looks at it or acknowledges it, but she begins to feel better about her “visibility.” They watch TV together, cook together. Jonah watches her steadily for a long time, not knowing where she is until one day she drops a large box and he realizes that she lives above him. He proceeds to follow her through London for the next several months, never saying anything. One day, Sophie sees a man in her father’s coat, and runs after him into traffic, where she’s hit by a car and goes into a coma. She comes out of the coma, Jonah nurses her back to health, and they finally acknowledge the strange situation they’re in. As Sophie regains strength, they slowly move apart again, and end the play watching television together through the screen and camera that Sophie sent.

It’s a strange little play.

We’re looking at

SOPHIE

This is a monologue I’ve pieced together (per usual) from the beginning of the play -- it’s just before Sophie sends Jonah the screen, when she’s struggling with her feeling of anonymity. Her father has just died of pancreatic cancer -- not suddenly, but he was all she had in the world (her mother left when she was very young), her father who “made [her] feel seen”.  

SOPHIE: And I notice something weird in the mirror. When I look at myself I can see myself like normal. But after a few seconds it’s like I start to fade. And I can see through to what’s behind. It’s like I’m disappearing. It’s the same if I stare at my hand, it’s like it fades. I start to think about what the other Sophie said, about how I lack visibility, and I begin to notice other things. Like at the shop I’ll stand at the counter. But the woman won’t look up. So I’ll drop a coin to make a noise, and now she does look up. But kind of through me for a second. Like I’m only slowly coming into focus. Then one day I’m on the tube and a man sits on me. Sits on me like I’m an empty seat. Then jumps up when he feels me there. Stares at me like I’m a ghost. A leaflet comes through from The Royal Society. About an event coming up called Ships That Appeared To Disappear. So I go along, thinking maybe it’s a Sign From The Gods. But it’s not. It’s a lecture on maritime navigation in the time of Charles the First.

(she and Jonah have a bunch of monologues in here, about her coping with her grief and his experience leaving his commune… I’m not going to copy them into here because this comes a page or so later)

SOPHIE: I regret giving my dad’s stuff away. Stuff like his old green coat, which I didn’t like when he was alive, but I miss it now. But everything’s gone from the charity shop so I start buying new stuff. Not like for like, just stuff that reminds me of him. Second-hand stuff off the internet mostly. It feels good getting post every day. And seeing my name in a stranger’s handwriting feels good too. But when I open the packets, the stuff I’ve bought tends to seem quite random. Like a hundred vintage marbles. Or a machine for shaving the fuzz off jumpers. So I keep these things in a box in the corner.

I also start smoking, which is deeply weird.

Okay!

That’s it!

The British accent I think is optional -- it’s not the point of the monologue (unlike the one from All New People in which she’s talking about getting deported), but there is some vernacular in here that will sound weird in an American accent, so if that’s something you’d rather do, I’d change “shop” to “store,” “tube” to “train,” “post” to “mail,” and “jumpers” to “sweaters.” But that’s just me. :)

Thanks again!

Once more:

If you’re going to do this piece

read the play

and POST!

We’d love to see it!

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

August: Osage County by Tracy Letts

EAT THE FISH BITCH!

Here, we have a crazy, dysfunctional play about a crazy, dysfunctional family.  Everyone is crazy in their own way, because everyone is trying to find a way to cope.

Violet, the matriarch, is diagnosed with cancer.  She copes by popping pills.  Beverly, her husband, drinks.  "That's the bargain we've struck"  he says.  In the prologue, he and Violet argue about hiring Johnna, a young Native American woman, for extra help around the house.  The prologue (and later the play) end with quotes from the T.S. Eliot poem 'The Hollow Men.'

A tragic event brings the family together- Beverly has disappeared.  Violet's daughters- Barbra, Ivy, and Karen,their families, and her sister Mattie Fae all arrive to support her.

Jean, the youngest of the bunch, is Barbra's daughter.  They suspect suicide.  Jean copes just like her father- she smokes weed.  When Johnna doesn't stop her from smoking, Jean opens up to her about the family drama she's been through. (This is when the monologue occurs.)

At the end of the act the Sheriff  (and Barbra's ex) tells the family that Beverly's body has been found- he drowned.

In act two, the fights escalate and eventually get physical.  Karen's fiance Steve slimily teases Jean about smoking pot.  This teasing, and the families fighting, escalate through the entire act. Nothing is resolved.  Jean and Steve smoke together, and by the end of a shared joint, Steve turns off the light and the audience hears nothing but heavy breathing.  Johnna, noticing something is wrong, turns on the light and beats Steve with a skillet.  The family rushes in, no one knows what happened, and everyone starts screaming at everyone else.

And then we arrive at the fantastic dinner scene.  Violet and her daughters are attempting to have dinner, during which Ivy hopes to confess to her mother that she is in a relationship with Little Charles, her dopey cousin.  What she does not know is that Little Charles is actually her half-brother.  Barbra does know this, and tries to shut down the conversation, eventually screaming at her mother to eat the fucking fish.  Despite her efforts, all is revealed.  Ivy leaves in shock and despair.  The play ends with Barbra leaving, Violet calling out for her daughters, and when no one comes, to Johnna and they quote the final lines of T.S. Eliot "this is the way the world ends... and then you're gone..."

The title comes from a poem by Howard Starks-

Dust hangs heavy in the dull catalpas;

the cicadas are scraping interminably

at the heart-thickened air—

no rain in three weeks, no real breeze all day,

In the dim room,

the blinds grimly endure the deadly light,

protecting the machined air,

as the watchers watch the old lady die.

“I’m eighty-six,” she said: “it’s high time—

now John’s gone.”

And to the town’s ne doctor

“You’re a good boy,” (she had a great-grandson

who was older,) “so don’t fiddle around.

When fighting was needed, I fought –

But I’m all fought out.”

and later—

“John left when he was due—well—I’m due now,”

“I promise, “ he whispered;

I’ve learned when right is right.”

Now, her daughters sit – – and her grand-daughters –

and at night, her grandsons- –

and her pampered sons-in-law.

One of these, not known for eloquence – –

or tears—said, last week,

“Ola, chance gave me a mother,

but God gave me two.”

She smiled at that,

“yes, I had one boy; god gave me seven more.”

She lies under the sheet,

Thin as one of her old kitchen knives,

honed by years and use to fragile sharpness,

but too well-tempered to break just yet.

It’s two days since she spoke—

“Don’t cry, Bessie;

puppies just die, that’s all.”

(A girl again,

gentling baby sister.)

All the watchers can do

is wipe her dry mouth with gentle wetness.

They watch her old hands and murmur—

How many biscuits

and pans of gravy?

How many babies soothed

and bee-stings daubed with bluing?

How many lamp-wicks trimmed?

How many berries picked?

words circling

as her quiet breath winds down to silence.

No sobs, for she was due, but tears, a few,

selfish ones,

before the calls, the “arrangements”

to put her to bed, beside John,

on the dusty hilltop.

Standing there,

we look up from the dry clods

and the durable grey stone,

upwards—

expectantly—

westwards—

where the clouds grow dark.

JEAN'S MONOLOGUE

Mom and Dad don't mind.  You won't get in trouble  or anything.

I just mean that they don't mind that I smoke pot.  Dad doesn't.  Mom kind of does.  She thinks it's bad for me.  I think the real reason it bugs her is because dad smokes pot too and she wishes he wouldn't.   

Dad's a lot cooler than mom really.  Well, that's not true.   He's just cooler in that way I guess.  

He's fucking one of his students which is pretty uncool if you ask me. Some people would think that’s cool, like those dicks who teach with him in the Humanities Department because they’re all fucking their students or wish they were fucking their students.  “Lo-liii-ta.”   I mean I don't care and all.  He can fuck whoever he wants and that's who teachers meet, students. He was just a turd the way he went about it, and didn’t give mom a chance to respond or anything.  What sucks now is that mom’s watching me like a hawk because she thinks I’ll go on some post-divorce freak out and become some heroin addict or shoot everybody at school or God forbid, lose my virginity.  I don’t know what it is about dad splitting that put mom on hymen patrol.

Mom freaked when she got the call from Aunt Ivy this morning, just like… freaked.  I’ve never seen her like that.  I couldn’t get her to calm down.  It was weird.  I guess it’s not weird that she freaked out, but like, to see your mom freak like that, like you’ve never seen before, y’know?  And we’re real close.  So imagine you see your parents one day just totally lose their shit just like ‘whoa.’

Don’t say anything about Mom and Dad splitting up okay?  It’s kind of low-key.