"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!