"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.

August Strindberg's "Miss Julie"

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

Classics, here we go! I really enjoy doing the not-done-as-often pieces by well-known ladies, and (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) piecing together monologues from scenes. This is not an example of the latter, but it is an example of the first. Because this week we’re gonna do

MISS JULIE

by August Strindberg

Strindberg wrote a lot of plays, most of them pretty dark and a lot of them pretty weird. This play is one of his most naturalistic, but even it gets so heightened at times that you can’t help but wish a director on it who won’t go the realistic route. This monologue is actually a pretty good example of a moment that could be taken far out of the literal, and I hope one day to work on a production of this play that does just that.

The play is about Miss Julie’s fall -- from the height of aristocracy and privilege to the lowness of a ‘whore’. She begins the play as the daughter of a Count, who has just been rejected by her fiance because her mother was a commoner (who probably burned the house down for insurance money and cheated on her father before she died). The Count and the rest of the aristocracy in the household have gone off to the country home, and Miss Julie is left to her own devices -- including joining the servants in their Midsummer’s Eve dance. The play begins when Jean, the family’s footman, comes into his quarters from the party where he’s been dancing with (Miss) Julie to see Kristin, his fiancee and a cook in the household. Julie follows him into the room, demanding he dance with her, and though he is careful to never put a toe out of line and constantly asks her to be wary because “people will talk”, Julie slowly gets closer and closer to him -- asking him to leave with her, helping him get dust out of his eye, etc -- until finally they escape into his bedroom to avoid a crowd of the servants who come into the room from the dance, jeering at Miss Julie’s fall. End Scene One. Scene Two begins as the servant party leaves, and Julie and Jean reenter the room, mussed from (never explicitly stated) sex. Jean describes a plan to leave the country and start a hotel in Switzerland together, but balks when he realizes Julie has no capital of her own. Julie might be pregnant, so there’s no keeping it a secret. The Count returns, and Julie and Jean decide that Julie must kill herself rather than bear the embarrassment of a ruined reputation.

Juuuust chipper.

We’re obviously focused on

MISS JULIE

In this monologue, which takes place in the initial, seduction stage of the play -- Julie is using everything in her artillery to convince Jean to take a chance and sleep with her, to ruin her reputation. Kristin, Jean’s fiancee and a cook in the house, is present and asleep in the corner. 

JULIE: Strange? Yes, but so are you. Anyway, everything is strange. Life, human beings, everything is a mess that’s floating, floating across the water until it sinks, sinks. I have a recurring dream from time to time: I’m on top of a pillar. I’m just sitting there, and I see no possible way of getting down. I feel dizzy when I look down, but I know I must get down. I don’t have the courage to throw myself. I can’t hold on. I long to be able to just fall, but I don’t fall. I know that I will have no peace until I’m down; no rest until I’m down, down to the ground. I also know that when I am down I will want the ground to open up and for me to just sink… sink. Have you ever felt anything like that?

Much Symbolism.

Very Metaphor.

Thanks again for reading! Best of luck with this amazing classical woman and as always, if you end up taking her on please read the play and post a video of you doing the monologue! We’d love to hear from you!

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

The Shadow Box - Michael Cristofer

Once in a blue moon, you get to audition for a character whose age spans 30 years over the course of the play.  If you are under thirty, this is the only occasion I would ever recommend using this monologue.  (There is a good monologue for a young woman as well- Agnes.)

Also, the description below includes SPOILERS.  There are some fantastic reveals in this play, so if you want to read it or see it first, skip this bit!  (Don’t worry, if you want to watch the video or read the text, the monologue is safe.)

THE SHADOW BOX by Michael Cristofer

The setting is a comfortable, beautiful resort where people with an unnamed terminal illness go to die.  There are three stories-

Joe, Maggie, and Steve-  Joe is the most recent arrival.  The play begins with him being interviewed.  The interviewer is heard but never seen, and these interviews allows  the subjects to express what they are unwilling to say to other characters. Maggie is Joe’s wife, Steve’s his son.  Joe asked Maggie to explain the situation to Steve before they arrived, but she couldn’t do it.  Steve arrives, equipt with his guitar, ready and excited for a family vacation.

Brian, Mark and Beverly- Brian is sick, but doesn’t want to accept it.  He’s living life to the fullest, never missing a sunrise, writing terrible poetry, and painting because the meds make fruit look awesome.  Mark, Brians lover, has trouble understanding Brian’s joy and even more trouble accepting that Brian is going to die.  The worse Brian gets, the more Mark hurts.  Beverly, Brian’s ex-wife arrives, drunk and covered in cheap jewelry (each piece signifying a different man she’s slept with.)  Brian finds comfort in Beverly’s entertaining, drunken extravagance, but it infuriates Mark.  They fight, but unite in their love for Brian.  Despite their reconciliation, their ending isn’t pretty and it isn’t happy.

Felicity and Agnes- Felicity is a sick, old woman.  She should have died a long time ago.  But, she is bargaining with death, refusing to die until she sees her daughter Claire, she wants to meet her grandchildren.  Her other daughter, Agnes, has been taking care of her mother.  We later learn that Claire died years ago, and Agnes has been writing her mother letters “from Claire,” because Felicity couldn’t cope with the loss.

The Monologue

This monologue is pieced together from two parts of an awesome scene between Mark and Beverly.  Mark tells Beverly how he met Brian, then tells her how hard it is to be with him.  Later in the scene, Beverly accuses Mark- “You don’t need to dirty your hands with that kind of rotten, putrid filth.  Unless of course you need the money.  What does he do- pay you by the month?  Or does it depend on how much you put out.  Mark suddenly hits her in the face.  Beverly quickly slaps him back- hard.  Mark is stunned.  Beverly hits him again.  Mark still doesn’t move.  Almost as if he doesn’t feel anything.  Beverly continues to slap his face until he connects with the pain.  He lets out a pure cry and breaks down.

Mark: I don’t want him to die.  I don’t… Please Beverly puts her arms around him.  I don’t want him to die.

Here is the dialogue leading into and the text of the monologue-

Mark-...Some of us are here for the duration.  And it is not easy.

Beverly- And some of us wouldn’t mind changing places with you at all.

Mark- And some of us just don’t care anymore.

Beverly- You’re cute, Mark.  But next to me, you are the most selfish son of a bitch I’ve ever met.

Mark- Oh wonderful!  That’s what I needed.  Yes sir.  That’s just what I needed.

Beverly- You’re welcome.

Mark- Look, don’t you think it’s time you picked up all your little screwing trophies and went home?

Beverly- Past time ... way past time. The sign goes up and I can see 'useless' printed all over it. Let me tell you something, as one whore to another-what you do with your ass is your business. You can drag it through every gutter from here to Morocco. You can trade it, sell it, or give it away. You can run it up a flagpole, paint it blue or cut it off if you feel like it. I don't care. I'll even show you the best way to do it. That's the kind of person I am. But Brian is different. Because Brian is stupid. Because Brian is blind. Because Brian doesn't know where you come from or who you come from or why or how or even what you are coming to. Because Brian happens to need you. And if that is not enough for you, then you get yourself out of his life-fast. You take your delicate sensibilities and your fears and your disgust, if that's all you feel, and you pack it up and you get out. Yes. That simple. A postcard at Christmas, a telegram for his birthday, and maybe a phone call every few years . . . if he lives. But only when it gets really bad. When the money and the time and the people are all running out faster than you care to count, and the reasons don't sound as good as they used to and you don't remember anymore why … why you walked out on the one person who said yes, you do what you have to because I love you. And you can't remember anymore what it was you thought you had to do or who the hell you thought you were that was so goddamn important that you couldn't hang around long enough to say goodbye or to find out what it was you were saying goodbye to . . . Then you phone, because you need to know that somewhere, for no good reason, there is one poor stupid deluded human being who smells and rots and dies and still believes in you. One human being who cares. My God, why isn't that ever enough?
He needs somebody.  Yeah.  That was my answer, too.  'Bye baby.  I've got a plane to catch.  i want to get to Hawaii before the hangover hits me.  It's funny, he always makes the same mistake.  He always cares about the wrong people.