All New People by Zach Braff

HI

IT’S SHANNON.

This week, we’re reading a play by Zach Braff -- yeah, that same Zach Braff we all know and love from Scrubs decided to pull a Jesse Eisenberg and wrote this play in 2011. It’s original production was at Second Stage Theatre, and it’s actually really, really good. Definitely a comedy.

It’s called:

ALL NEW PEOPLE

by Zach Braff

The play takes place in a Long Island beach home in winter. It opens with Charlie, who has come to the seclusion of the off-season location to hang himself only to be interrupted Emma, an English illegal alien working as a real estate agent. She has arrived in an attempt to sell the house to prospective buyers, but takes her intervention of Charlie’s suicide as a sign. Her best friend, a firefighter/drug dealer named Myron arrives, and as they pester Charlie about his decision, he tells them that the reason he is killing himself is because he himself has killed six people. Kim, a prostitute bought for Charlie’s his friend who owns the house, arrives and Myron flirts with her as one by one they each reveal what has brought them to this point in their lives: Emma was raped in England and has sworn to never return, Myron was fired from his job as a high school drama teacher for having sex with one of his students, and Charlie was an airport controller who killed six people when he got distracted at work. They muse over how fucked up life can be, and Kim tells the story of when she worked in a phone sex office, and a woman named Sensation comforted her once by telling her “in a hundred years, there will be all new people.”

It really is a comedy, I promise.

The monologue I’ll be doing is

(yet another character named)

EMMA

This is Emma’s entrance, essentially. She walks in, has discovered that Charlie is trying to kill himself, and has called him out on his activity, which he denies. She’s also super stoned. A British accent is required for this one -- the play doesn’t specify where exactly in England she’s from, though. Also the stakes of her going back to England are very high -- as I mention in the summary, she’s on the run from England because she was followed home and raped, so that reality underlies the beginning of the monologue.

So yeah! Here we go!

EMMA: Look, I don’t mean to be insensitive.

CHARLIE: Are you sure?

EMMA: I have no idea what’s going on with you or what your current situation is. It does seem a bit little like you might be trying to hang yourself with an extension cord, but I’m fully aware that things aren’t always what they seem. Book by its cover, blah, blah, blah. You very well may have been trying to... wire up some Christmas lights when you tripped and got all tangled up in that extension cord. But if I don’t rent a house for next summer soon, I’m gonna be fired and they’re gonna try to send me back to bloody fucking England because I don’t have a green card or a visa and there aren’t too many jobs I can get. I’m not gonna wipe anyone’s ass but my own and I’d make a horrible day-laborer; I’m running out of options. Pretty soon I’ll be right up there with you, accidentally hanging myself whilst merely trying to be festive. So would you please do a stranger a tiny kindness and allow me to attempt to rent your parents’ adorable little beach house to this nice Jewish couple from South Orange? (he stares at her a beat. gets down from the chair. lights a cigarette.)

CHARLIE: Go ahead.

EMMA: Thank you. (beat)

CHARLIE: Well, where are they?

EMMA: They’re not here yet. They said they were on their way. But they’re old and Jewish; it could be hours. They said they had to first pick up their grandson, Saul. Why Saul needs to come, I have no idea. Personally, I think they’re gonna try and set me up with him. With Saul: a dentist. A dentist who does community theater. Who the fuck would date a dentist!? A dentist wouldn’t date a dentist. He probably wears Les Miserables t-shirts to the gym. Do you mind if I have a drink? (Before he can answer she crosses to the bar and pours some whiskey in a glass.)

EMMA: I’m sorry, I’m being completely insensitive and bloody fucking selfish and self-centered. Horrible. I’m not a good person. I suck at being human; desperation has made me evil. It’s disgusting. So I apologize... New chapter: why were you trying to off yourself? And why hanging; it seems to be the most violent of all methods. Haven’t you any pills?

CHARLIE: I have pills.

EMMA: Really. What have you got?

CHARLIE: Xanax, Valium, Klonopin.

EMMA: Party, party, party. We could turn this day around for both of us real quick, couldn’t we? I’m just kidding. Well not really, but that’s irrelevant. Back to you? Girlfriend cheated? Lost it all in the market? Tired of hiding your love of cock? What put you over the edge?

CHARLIE: I really don’t wanna talk about it.

EMMA: Well, what’s the point in being coy about it now? If you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it,right? They always say that people who really wanna off themselves are gonna find a way. Well maybe God sent you me and the Goldberg’s for one last shot at talking you out of it. Don’t you believe in fate? I’m sorry, what’s your name?

CHARLIE:Charlie.

EMMA: Don’t you believe in fate, Charlie? Here you are, in an empty beach house, on a deserted island, in the middle of the fucking winter, moments away from ending it all, when in I walk. Does that give you no pause? Maybe God sent me to provide you with the some sort of... access to the doors of your mind that remain locked. (pause.) Sorry. I should tell you that I am super stoned right now. So if I say dumbass shit like “access to the doors of your mind that remain locked,” you have to forgive me. You have to give me a little “that poor girl is stoned outta her face” leeway.

Annndd that’s it. It’s a little long and can get kind of choppy -- Emma has another good monologue at the end of the play, where she describes why she can’t go back to England, but it’s a little melodramatic for an audition so I went with this one instead. Kim also has a good one (if you’re the superhot model type) at the very end of the play about the woman named Sensation that includes the “all new people” line.  And as usual, if you decide to use this piece we’d love to hear from you!

This has been

SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and again,

I’M SHANNON

ENJOY!