Ashville, by Lucy Thurber

Hi all, I’m Hannah Roze and I’m thrilled to be joining Eileen and Shannon in MonoBlogging!

For my first week, I am sharing a piece cut together from Lucy Thurber’s ASHVILLE. (For the record: I cut it together, it’s not a true monologue!) The character is CELIA, and the piece is cut from scene eight.

ASHVILLE is one of my absolute favorite contemporary plays and Lucy Thurber my favorite contemporary playwrights. If you want to play girls with grit—intelligent, strong, down to earth, yet vulnerable females struggling against their roots— you should read Thurber’s plays, Especially the cycle of plays called THE HILLTOWN PLAYS, of which ASHVILLE is the second. (When completed all five plays were produced in rep in 2013, simultaneously in four different downtown theaters including The Rattlestick—that’s how good Lucy Thurber is!!

ASHVILLE is set in the springtime in rural Massachusetts, (where the playwright herself grew up,) on the porch and inside of a Row House that is divided into three apartments, with identical layouts. In one apartment resides:

CELIA, 16, a high school student.

SHELLEY…36, Celia’s Ma, a waitress.

Sometimes JAKE and HARRY sleep over.

JAKE…19, Celia’s boyfriend/fiancé, a construction worker.

HARRY…Shelley’s current hook up, a bum.

Inhabiting a second apartment, are:

JOEY… Jake’s older cousin, a construction worker.

AMANDA…24, a waitress, Joey’s longterm girlfriend.

The two really love each other in a lasting way.

And in the last apartment lives:

JOE…30s-mid 40s, he deals pot and is obsessed with Ulysses by James Joyce.

They are all blue collar, working people, stuck in their hometown. Best anyone can hope for is a good job and a good marriage.

This is the world Celia wants to escape.

And there is something special about Celia. There’s this hope and potential everyone senses and gravitates to, like moths to a light in the dark. She is just starting to turn men’s heads with wild curly hair and great ass. She is bright: won’t go out till her homework is done and is going to graduate high school. She doesn’t smoke like everyone else, but when she does goes out she will drink and tries an ecstasy pill.

But she is repressed, drowning in numbness. She swallows her own thoughts and feelings to be the “good girl” she is expected to be. To be the caretaker of the depressed, jealous Shelley and good girlfriend to her oblivious boyfriend, Jake.

Then: Shelley hits Celia. Celia goes over to Joe’s, gets drunk and lets him go down on her—but that’s their secret. The next morning Jake proposes; he slips a diamond ring on Celia’s finger without waiting for her answer. That night she is supposed to go out with him and the neighbors to celebrate their engagement, but ends up in a hysterics and instead runs off with Amanda. Amanda, her older, cooler, pretty neighbor, her mother’s rival. The woman Celia has secret feelings for. After a whole night running around town, avoiding their boyfriends, when it is so early it is late, the two are on the porch watching the sky and talking. And Celia makes her move:

CELIA: I want to tell you something. No. I want. I want to really tell you something. I have things to say but when I try to say them I feel like-like nothing, you know? I pick my words very carefully-I try to say what I mean- Do you see me? I want you to see me-Do you? I get touched but nobody touches me. I get kissed and I clamp on hard. I clamp down hard, I-I walk and talk. I eat, I…I want, I want someone to touch my back, to run their hand down my back…I want, I want! God, look at the sky…it’s so filled with light…And I feel…I actually feel…feel happy! Come on let's go some place else. I'll drive. Come on. We could go to New Mexico. I read in my geography book that the land is flat and the sky is big. We could get a hell of a suntan out there. We could sunbathe with our shirts off. Would you wanna do that? Sunbathe with me, with our shirts off? Would you like to see my breasts? What? This is going nowhere. Do something. Make something happen. I've been waiting all night. You said you loved me-You told my mother you loved me-I want to feel something too-I want-Fuck-You think I’m pretty. Give me a Kiss [me]. I know you want to. [Because] You’ve been staring at my mouth all night. You're gonna kiss me. You know you’re going to kiss me. You just want to talk a lot first. Don’t lie. Why are you making me make all the moves? You're older. You’re more experienced. So, Stop torturing me! [Please]

Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

Okay, it’s happening. We’re going classic here. I know we started with Nina and all that, but trust me, this one is… bigger. And better, depending on your take. This week, we’ll be exploring my favorite monologue from one of the best and most iconic ingenue roles of all time:

ROMEO AND JULIET

by William Shakespeare

Looking at

JULIET

(of course.)

Now, you read this play in high school or university, but read it again, now. It’s brilliant. The balcony scene makes me cry every time with its innocence and earnestness, Juliet’s (often cut) tragic struggle to maintain control of a situation that is entirely out of her hands in Friar Lawrence’s cell -- ugh. Brilliant.

Doing Juliet has its danger, but it also has its freedom. Everyone has seen, read, knows, and has an opinion about this play. But if you do it well, no one will care. And the key to doing it well is DO NOT IMITATE OTHER JULIETS. I’m gonna repeat that:

DO NOT IMITATE OTHER JULIETS.

Shakespeare wrote humans, not archetypes, and finding where Juliet fits into you is just as important as nailing the verse, in my opinion. Every great actress has played Juliet at some point, and finding out what YOUR Juliet looks like is an essential part of the journey. If you walk into the room with Just Another Juliet, you’ll be walked out pretty quickly. But if you spend time with this piece and find where it lands on you, where it resonates, what you understand best about it and where you think it’s funny or quirky or interesting… that’s when you find an audition worth doing. Anyway, if you’ve been asked to bring in Shakespeare, they’ve seen everything anyway, so doing something you like is better than doing something ‘rare’.

Okay, enough ranting.

Also, I’m not going to summarize for you (#sorrynotsorry #readtheplay). Shakespeare summarized it himself, and so I’ll just use his:

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona where we lay our scene.

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Doth, with their death, bury their parents’ strife.

The fearful passage of their death-marked love

And the continuance of their parents’ rage,

Which, but their children’s end nought could remove,

Is now the two-hours passage of their stage.

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

(Also, two hours? Ha. Shakespeare: an optimist, ammirite?)

On to the monologue!

This is sometimes known as “the potion monologue” because it’s the scene where Juliet, having been given a potion by the Friar, is about to go into her “death-like sleep.” Despite being secretly married Romeo, Juliet has been sentenced by her father to marry the count Paris. As a means of escape the Friar has given her a potion that will put her into a sleep that will seem like death, with the promise that Romeo (newly banished) will wake her in her family’s vault after she has been buried. Pretty morbid, eh? She’s just bid her mother and (more importantly) her Nurse (her best friend), farewell for the final time, and is about to take the potion.

JULIET:

Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,

That almost freezes up the heat of life:

I'll call them back again to comfort me:

Nurse! What should she do here?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.

Come, vial.

What if this mixture do not work at all?

Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?

No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there.

(laying down her dagger)

What if it be a poison, which the friar

Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,

Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,

Because he married me before to Romeo?

I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,

For he hath still been tried a holy man.

How if, when I am laid into the tomb,

I wake before the time that Romeo

Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!

Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?

Or, if I live, is it not very like,

The horrible conceit of death and night,

Together with the terror of the place,--

As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,

Where, for these many hundred years, the bones

Of all my buried ancestors are packed:

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,

Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,

At some hours in the night spirits resort;--

Alack, alack, is it not like that I,

So early waking, what with loathsome smells,

And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:--

O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,

Environed with all these hideous fears?

And madly play with my forefather's joints?

And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?

And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,

As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?

O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost

Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body

Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay!

Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

Ugh. So good.

Juliet also has some other amazing monologues that are even MORE commonly done: “Romeo, Oh Romeo” in Act II, scene II, “Gallop Apace” in Act III, scene II, and… pretty much the whole play. Again, read the play, have fun with the monologues, and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t play Juliet: you totally can.

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

Wait Until Dark by Fredrick Knott

Note:  The role we are looking at today is a nine year old girl.  So this is not a good audition piece (unless you’re audition to play a little girl in a very dark play), but it’s really fun all the same.

This play is a crazy thriller with tons of twists- I haven’t spoiled anything here, so go check it out!

Wait Until Dark is the story of a doll.  A very important doll.  A man named Sam was given this doll at an airport and a young woman persuaded him to transport it across the Canadian border.  She told him it was was for a little girl in a hospital.  What Sam didn’t know was that the doll contained several grams of heroin, and that the woman who asked him to transport it was murdered a few days later.

Sam brings the doll home to his apartment, which he shares with his wife, Susy, who lost her sight in a car accident a few years ago.  She is still learning how to be blind.

A con-man named Roat and two ex-convicts named Mike and Carlino have tracked the location of the doll to Mike and Susy’s apartment. They begin an elaborate charade pretending to be police officers, and convincing Susy that her husband has been implicated in the woman’s murder, and the doll is the key to his innocence.  But, she refuses to tell them anything.

GLORIA

Gloria is a bratty little girl with a dysfunctional family.  Sam has been her father figure ever since her dad disappeared.  So, when Gloria hears that Sam has a doll for another girl, she gets jealous.  She takes the doll.  Yup, the doll stuffed with heroin is now in the hands of a nine year old.  But, Gloria feels bad, and she brings the doll back.  She tries to sneak it in, but Susy catches her.  At this point, the situation is dire, and probably deadly.  And Gloria thinks it’s an awesome adventure.

This monologue takes place before Gloria and Susy have joined forces- Gloria still has the doll hidden away.  Gloria is mad because Susy panicked over a small cigarette paper that caught fire, and she blamed it on Gloria.  

Don't you ever call me that again. AND I DO NOT STEAL! You told mother I'd stolen a doll of yours. What would I want with a silly doll? And don't you shout at me! I- don't- like- being- shouted- at! Understand?

Susy, I wanted to help you today. I only threw unbreakables. Daddy taught me that. Boy, he sure threw things the night he left. He went around the whole apartment, throwing all the unbreakables on the floor. But mother finally got wise to this and said "Well, just look at you. You can't even break anything!" And when we woke up the next morning, he'd gone.

Susy? You can call me four eyes. One day. If you'd like. But not just yet, if you don't mind.