Anna Ziegler's 'Life Science'

Hi!

It's Eileen!

I'm back!

And I have three awesome plays coming your way- stay tuned!

Today's monologue is from -

LIFE SCIENCE 

BY ANNA ZIEGLER

Anna Ziegler is an amazing playwright.   Her other plays include "BFF," "Boy" (which was just Off-Broadway at Keen Company/Ensemble Studio Theatre), and "Actually" (which will be performed in the Williamstown Festival this year.)  "Life Science" is one of her lesser known plays.

Typical teens trying to determine what they mean to the political world and trying to cope with everyday teenage troubles.  Dana, Leah, and Mike are all Jewish, and are trying to figure out what that means to them.

DANA  17. Asks big, slightly inappropriate questions at slightly inappropriate times.  "An alpha girl, very pretty, and outwardly confident."  Pretends to be less smart than she is.

LEAH 17.  Feels 19.  "talkative, high-strung, a little nervous, very intelligent.  The kind of slightly geeky girl who has a handful of cool friends but isn't quite cool herself."  A self-proclaimed sad and thoughtful person.

TOM Asian.  Adopted. "Quiet but not a dork, even-keeled, modest measured, smart.  A respected loner."

MIKE "A bit of a jock, but no dummy even though he thinks he is.  He's popular and attractive."

The play begins with Leah and Tom discussing the political climate in the middle East, Antisemitism, and Jewish identity.  Well, Leah talks, and Tom just listens.  The scene quickly shifts to the most awkward sort-of date ever.  Leah's drinking.  Tom is not.  They sort-of like-like each other.  We also learn that Dana and Mike went out for eleven months and nine days, Mike wanted to sleep with her and she wasn't ready, but it's obvious that Dana still likes him.

Everyone thinks that Dana is having a "mid-life crisis"- she has decided not to go to college.  Then, she sees a news report about a twelve-year-old boy named Abdul from Lebanon whose parents were killed.  She is inspired to adopt him.

Leah and Tom make out.  It's awkward at best.  Leah says things like "your parents go away alot... don't they love you" and just as they're about to kiss "Has anyone ever told you that you look a little... I mean, young for your age?"  And then after they kiss "Did you know, you kind of... no offense or anything, but you kind of kiss like a fish? ... I wouldn't call it good.  It felt a little... inexperienced."  Leah reminds me a lot of Lucy from Charlie Brown.  Despite all of this, Leah wants to date Tom.

Neither one of them has dated before, so her idea is that they date for one year, just to have the experience.  But before he answers, Tom falls asleep.  Leah then has a short monologue where we begin to understand her problem- despite everything and everyone around her, she feels completely alone.  (This is a great monologue, though a little short- the one we'll be looking at comes a bit later in the play.)

Everyone judges Dana for wanting to adopt Abdul.  She has taken steps forward and has begun the adoption process.  Leah especially thinks she's crazy.  They fight.  It ends with

DANA. So you're afraid of who you are?

LEAH. Yes!

DANA.  Well, good.  So am I!

Dana and Mike have a fight in art class.  Mike thinks that if she wasn't ready to have sex with him, how could she possibly be ready to adopt a child.

Leah is sitting in the stairwell freaking out about college applications.  Mike begins to comfort her and quickly kisses her.  Leah immediately goes to text Tom.  She accidently texts Dana.

Leah tells Mike he kisses really well.  Mike tells Leah she's pretty.  Leah tells Mike she's imagined this happening since about the fifth grade.  Mike has trouble finding words for the way he is feeling.  Leah comforts him- "You're lonely. that's all."  They have a deep conversation- the kind of conversation that Leah has been trying to have all along.

Leah and Dana have back-to-back monologues.  We'll be looking at Leah's.  (Dana's is great, but harder to understand outside the context of the show.)  Leah is apologizing to Tom.  Dana is at her interview to see if she is a fit parent for Abdul.  But, during the interview, she has a change of heart. "From what I've heard, people become their parents; they become the parents their parents were, whether they want to or not and I just can't... inflict that on Abdul.  I just can't.  I mean, look at me.  Look at me."

Next we see a split-stage.  Mike and Dana on one side, in bed together.  They've just had sex.  Leah and Tom on the other side, making ammends.  Dana reads Mike a letter from Abdul.  She feels terrible.  Leah and Tom talk about more typical high school topics- fear of college, fear of sex, wanting to be ready for all of it.  Mike tells Dana he had sex with someone else when they were broken up, then he tells her he loves her.  She's not okay.  And that's it- that's the end of the play- a crazy conction of stereotypical high school drama, morbid thoughts, and mature existential life questions all through the lens of a couple of teenage friends.

Now, for the monologue.  Leah is apologizing to Tom.  (In the play, she is leaving him a voice mail.  I perfer to perform it as though he's standing in front of me.)

LEAH

I have an iPod Nano.  I have a Dell laptop.  I have a Samsung cell phone.  I have a J. Crew credit card.  I have eleven applications out at eleven schools.  I have a younger brother and two anxious parents.  I'm not sure who I am and what I'm meant to do.  I'm sorry that I got confused.  My mom says confusion is just this natural human thing, and unavoidable, but my dad thinks it's the mark of a weak person and I really don't want to think of myself that way, as a weak person.  Do you think I'm...?

No, what I'm trying to say is... there are just so many things... My mother was crying last night because what if I don't get into college, and what if I do?  And Dylan's obsessed with the Civil War now and his room is filled with these awful daguerreotypes and you look in these soldiers eyes and just see how they don't know this is the last picutre that they'll ever have taken of them, that tomorrow they'll be thrown onto this battlefield and they'll never come home again.

Um.  What I really mean is... I didn't mean it when I said I only wanted to go out with you temporarily.  I'm sorry for saying that.   I think it was a kind of... weak thing to say, or do to you, because I'm realizing more and more that words are acts, or deeds or whatever... and I wish I could have used mine better, impressed you more by saying the right things.  No.  I wish I could have earned your respect.  So maybe you'll give me another chance to do that?  I don't know.  I mean, it would be great if you called me.  I mean, if you wanted to call me.  But.

Okay.  So... Bye.

Proof, by David Auburn

HI.

IT'S SHANNON.

This is a very smart, moving play made into a movie in 2005 starring Gweneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhal. I'm not 100% in love with the casting of the movie, but the play itself has some very well-written scenes and excellently characterized arguments. A teacher I had once told me that fight scenes are all about characters trying NOT to fight -- just like crying onscreen is about trying NOT to cry and playing drunk is about trying to sober up. It's the conflict of resisting the impulse that makes a character compelling, and this play has some brilliant scenes which flourish by merit of that struggle.

PROOF

By David Auburn

Proof tells the story of Catherine, the brilliant, math-minded daughter of an even more brilliant mathematician (Robert). Her father's brilliance dissolved into lunacy not long after a mathematical discovery that made him famous. Catherine was left to care for him, quitting school and living in their Chicago home while her sister Claire moved to New York and got a job to fund their father's care. At the onset of the play, Robert has died. Hal, one of Robert's students in later years, is at the house, going through the graphomaniacal scrawls Robert wrote in in a series of notebooks. He asks her out, but an argument ensues. The next day is the funeral, and Claire, Catherine's sister, has come in from New York to take control. At the funeral, Hal and Catherine hook up, and he spends the night. She gives him a key to a specific drawer in her father's study. The next morning a hungover Claire breaks the bad news: She is sure she knows best and suspects that Catherine, who inherited Robert's genius, might have inherited some of his tendencies towards insanity as well. She urges Catherine to return to New York with her, and confesses that she's already sold their father's house. Catherine (understandably), is furious. Hal comes out, amazed and bearing a notebook -- the proof in the notebook is a mathematical discovery beyond belief. Catherine reveals: she wrote it. Claire and Hal refuse to believe her -- it doesn't end well. The next day, Claire rebukes Hal for his behavior towards Catherine, but urges him to take the notebook and investigate it at the University. The following morning, Catherine prepares to leave with Claire to go to New York -- she is resigned and has no choice.  Hal comes to see her off, and asks him to please, please explain the proof to him. She accepts, and the play ends.

We will be looking at

CATHERINE

(Claire’s also a great part)

This scene happens at the beginning of the play, during Hal and Catherine’s first fight, and he’s asking to continue to come back and go through her father’s notebooks, claiming that someone needs to know whether or not Robert was actually insane, or whether there’s genius in one of the books that could be published.

HAL: Please. Someone should know for sure whether ---

CATHERINE: I LIVED WITH HIM. I spent my life with him. I fed him. Talked to him. Tried to listen when he talked. Talked to people who weren’t there… Watched him shuffling around like a ghost. A very smelly ghost. He was filthy. I had to make sure he bathed. My own father.

HAL: I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have…

CATHERINE: After my mother died it was just me here. I tried to keep him happy no matter what idiotic project he was doing. He used to read all day. He kept demanding more and more books. I took them out of the library by the carload. We had hundreds upstairs. Then I realized he wasn’t reading: he believed aliens were sending him messages through the dewey decimal numbers on the library books. He was trying to work out the code.

HAL: What kind of messages?

CATHERINE: Beautiful mathematics. Answers to everything. The most elegant proofs, perfect proofs, proofs like music.

HAL: Sounds good.

CATHERINE: Plus fashion tips, knock-knock jokes -- I mean it was NUTS, okay?

HAL: He was ill. It was a tragedy.

CATHERINE: Later the writing phase: scribbling, nineteen, twenty hours a day… I ordered him a case of notebooks and he used every one.

I dropped out of school… I’m glad he’s dead.

HAL: I understand why you’d feel that way.

CATHERINE: Fuck you.

The last line of this monologue is optional, but since so much of it is directed at someone not in the scene, I thought it would be good to kind of clue back into Hal as your scene partner at the last moment. Take it or leave it. :)

As always,

Buy, Read, Post!

This has been

SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and again,

I’M SHANNON

ENJOY!

The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter

I’ve done something VERY unconventional here- I’ve created a monologue from lines in different parts of the play.  I’m talking different scenes, different acts, dozens of pages apart.  So, if you think that’s a terrible idea, feel free to skip on over to the next post.  But, if you’re going to stick around, I bring you

THE WHALE

By Samuel D. Hunter

The play takes place over the course of five days.  It follows Charlie, a morbidly obese (we’re talking 600 lbs), very close to death, gay man.  He’s a teacher- when we meet him on Monday, he finishes the class, turns on some gay porn, and begins to masterbate.  He begins to have trouble breathing- he’s panicking and he can’t stand up.  The porn won’t stop playing.

Enter Elder Thomas, a Mormon missionary.  He immediately wants to call an ambulance.  Instead, Charlie makes him read aloud an essay.  We learn later that the essay was written by his daughter, Ellie, when she was in 8th grade.  Charlie hasn’t seen his daughter in fifteen years.  His marriage ended in divorce- his wife, Mary, fought hard for custody and won..

Charlie and Alan, his lover, were both Mormon, and began seeing each other against their parents wishes.  Alan was so troubled by this that he would hyperventilate every time they drove past the church.  One day, his dad asked him to please come to the church that day- he had written a sermon just for him.  Alan came out of the church a broken man.  He stopped eating completely.  He was taken care of only by Charlie, and his sister Liz, who discovered his body.

Liz has been Charlie’s nurse.  Throughout the play she yells at him, fusses at him, nags at him- she’s the first to tell him he has to go to the hospital. He refuses.  It’s not until the end that Liz completely loses it, because Charlie is doing the same thing Alan did, and there is nothing she can do about it.

At the end of the play, we finally learn about the sermon that caused Alan to break down and literally starve himself to death.  The sermon was about Jonah and the whale- a story about a man who turned his back on God.

If you want to see how this is all revealed- please check out the play.  For now, I’m going to switch gears and focus on Charlie’s daughter-

ELLIE

She shows up at the beginning of the week to see her father for the first time since she was two.  She is cruel… at best.

Charlie wants to know why she isn’t at school.  Turns out, she’s suspended- “I blogged about my stupid bitch lab partner.  She told her stupid bitch mom and the vice principal said it was “vaguely threatening.”  Ellie has a blog, a “trash site” where she posts pictures of her friends and her mom and insults them.  It’s like a blog, but the only thing she ever talks about is how much she doesn’t like people.  She’s failing.  Personally, socially and academically.  

Charlie wants to help.  First, he offers to help her pass her classes.  Then he offers to pay her to spend time with him.  One hundred and twenty thousand dollars to be exact.  Everything he has.  She quickly agrees.

Later on, Ellie meets Elder Thomas.  She’s horrible to him (like she is to everyone), but he sticks around.  Whether he feels a genuine connection, is intrigued by her cruelty, or thinks he can help her is anyone’s guess.  She hates him,, but she sticks around because “everyone else I know is even less attractive, interesting, and intelligent than you.”

She gets him to smoke pot.   He takes a hit, she takes a picture.

Later on, there’s a huge confrontation between Charlie, Liz, Ellie, and her mom (Mary.)  Mary knows immediately that Charlie’s promised Ellie all of his money.  It turns out, Charlie has put almost all of his earnings from teaching into a savings account for Ellie.  Liz had no idea.  She’s been doing his shopping from a bank account which holds less than seven hundred dollars.  She’s furious- they could have afforded all the medical care he needed, but he still refuses to even go to the hospital.  As the fight concludes, everyone exits, leaving Charlie and Mary alone for the first time in fifteen years.  They talk about Ellie- Mary says that she’s an evil girl.  Charlie thinks that getting to know her has been amazing.  She has a “strong personality” he says.  In this scene we learn why Charlie is so intent on helping Ellie in some way- “I need to know I did one thing right in my life.”

Next, we learn that Ellie posted the pictures she took of Elder Thomas smoking pot- she told his parents where he was.  “And my parents saw the pictures, and they called the church here in town, and they told them where I was staying, and I can’t figure out whether she was trying to help me or hurt me… I thought my parents were going to disown me, and you know what they said?  They said they loved me, they cared about me,and they wanted me to come home.”  Charlie believes that Ellie was trying to help him.  He has to believe it.  “Do you ever get that feeling? He says to Liz, “that people are incapable of not caring?”  I believe that is the key to Ellie.

THE AMBULANCE IS COMING THEY’LL TAKE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL  YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE AWHILE AGO

I FAILED  ARE YOU JUST TRYING TO SCREW ME OVER ONE LAST TIME BEFORE YOU DIE  I DON’T CARE THAT YOU’RE DYING  I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU  DO YOU WANT ME TO FAIL OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL  IS THAT WHY YOU DID THIS

YOU’RE JUST LIKE MY IDIOT TEACHERS YOU THINK BECAUSE I DON’T GO NUTS OVER SOME STUPID LITTLE POEM IT’S BECAUSE I’M TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND IT  MAYBE I DO UNDERSTAND IT  MAYBE I UNDERSTAND EXACTLY WHAT THIS POEM IS ABOUT  BUT I JUST DON’T CARE BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN BY SOME SELF-INVOLVED MORON AND EVEN THOUGH HE THINKS THAT HIS “METAPHOR FOR THE SELF” IS DEEP AND SHIT IT’S ACTUALLY JUST SOME STUPID LITTLE POEM AND IT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING  HOW ABOUT THAT

I’M A SMART PERSON  I NEVER FORGET ANYTHING  IN THE LIVING ROOM WITH THAT OLD RED COUCH AND THE TV WITH THE WOOD FRAME  AND YOU WERE ON THE FLOOR AND MOM WAS SCREAMING AT YOU AND YOU WERE JUST APOLOGIZING OVER AND OVER YOU WERE SO PATHETIC  I REMEMBER THAT

CAN I HAVE ONE OF THOSE DONUTS

I CAN’T BE HERE RIGHT NOW  I HAVE TO GO  I CAN’T  THE AMBULANCE IS COMING THEY’LL HELP YOU  YOU’RE GOING TO THE HOSPITAL  YOU JUST NEED SURGERY OR SOMETHING  YOU ASSHOLE  YOU FAT FUCKING ASSHOLE DAD PLEASE

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]

The Shape of Things, by Neil LaBute

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

Neil LaBute was one of the most controversial playwrights of the 2000s. In theatre school I either had teachers who handed him out to everyone saying “He writes like real people talk about things you’ll be able to relate to. Do it!” or refused to let us bring in so much as a monologue, saying “His characters are non-redeemable and he uses profanity in lieu of good writing”... Yeah, well, everyone’s a critic. I love LaBute. I’ve written papers on him, directed plays of his, and used this monologue time and time again. So I say go for it. He’s pretty identifiable, but if you can really do one of his pieces, go for it.

Therefore I bring you

THE SHAPE OF THINGS
by Neil LaBute

WARNING: This play is all about the twist, and I’m going to give it away in the paragraph below because it’s relevant (if not necessary) to the monologue. Please please please read the play instead. Here! (http://amzn.to/1RS5nNn) That’s a link to the Amazon page where you can buy it. Buy it and read it and don’t read the paragraph below. Trust me, the monologue I’ve chosen will be self-evident.

The play is about Adam, a nerdy, sweet literature major (MA) at an unspecified midwestern university who meets a young graduate art student, Evelyn at his job as a security guard at the art museum. She’s in the middle of defacing a statue, and instead of arresting her, Adam gets her number. They start dating. Slowly he begins to work out, loses weight, cuts his hair, dresses better, gets a nose job, and, in general gets a little darker, more interesting, and less nice. His relationship with his best friend’s girlfriend, Jenny, gets a little ambiguous. Evelyn, though evidently alright with the changes, confronts him about Jenny, and in defense he proposes. Before responding, she invites him to her thesis presentation. It’s him. His changes have been her project over the year, and the ways in which he has become more appealing overall are evidence of her ‘sculpting.’ At the end of the presentation, she rejects his proposal. He confronts her, and her argument is “it was real to you, therefore it was real. It wasn’t to me, therefore it wasn’t. It’s all subjective, Adam. Everything.”

Yeah. What a bitch, right?

I love this part, I love this play, I love the complete turn around it does and the ways in which everyone is wrong but no one is wrong.

So of course

EVELYN

This is the presentation monologue. She’s just spent the entire play making this man into exactly who she wants him to be and she knows that that’s not ‘okay.’ This is her reason, her defense, her thesis that she’s given up her life for the past year to prove. And she, in her mind (I won’t speak for yours or even mine), is right.

EVELYN:

And yet, open any fashion magazine, turn on any television program, and the world will tell  you  he's only gotten more interesting,  more desirable, more normal. In a word, better. He is a living,  breathing example… of our obsession  with the surface of things, the shape of them. Not bad, huh? And ladies he is available. This was a completely startling and unexpected gesture, but obviously, I can't accept. You can examine the stone and setting further when it's placed  in the exhibit.

As for me, I have no regrets, no feelings of remorse for my actions, the manufactured emotions - none of it. I have always stood by the single and simple conceit that I am an artist, only that. I follow in a long tradition of artists who believe that there is no such concept as religion, government, community, or even family. There is only art; art that must be created whatever the cost. With that in mind, I present to you my untitled sculpture and supporting materials tonight. Thank you.

Yeah, it’s kind of horrible. Amazing, but horrible. I’m not sure what it says about me that I adore this part (she’s kind of a modern-day Hedda Gabler), but I do. As with Sarah Ruhl last week this will not be the last LaBute play on the docket for this blog, but if you’re impatient, here are some others I’d recommend: In a Dark Dark House, Fat Pig and reasons to be pretty. The one thing I’ll say about LaBute is that if you pick him, make sure you’re casting yourself correctly. The casting director or teacher could put a lot of stock in which LaBute character you think you are.

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

Seminar, by Theresa Rebeck

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

So this is one of my favorite plays, by another fabulous lady playwright, Theresa Rebeck. She’s very popular, and very, very good. My other favorite play by her, which has great female parts (and is sadly but expectedly a little overdone by girls looking for monologues) is Spike Heels, which I am certain you will see on this blog at some point (despite its being overdone). This one, however, is even better. It’s about writers, and (at least to me) treads that perfect, delicate line of pretentious, yet human. Its a writer writing about writers writing, and doing so masterfully.

UGH.

I love this play.

So.

My gift to you this week:

SEMINAR

by Theresa Rebeck

(you’re welcome)

Seminar is about four young writers who take a class with a well-renowned writer/editor, Leonard, in hopes of launching their careers. Douglas has a famous uncle, Izzy has a rampant sex drive, Kate has one story she’s been working on for six years, and Martin has… well we don’t know what Martin has because he won’t show it to anyone. Kate and Martin are old friends who clearly have a thing for each other. The play takes place over the course of several scenes, all (except the last) in Kate’s parents’ fabulous-and-rent-stabilized Upper West Side apartment. In the first scene, Douglas is pretentious, Leonard tears apart Kate’s story, and Martin falls for Izzy’s sexuality. In the second, Douglas and Izzy might be sleeping together, but then Leonard reads Izzy’s story, using it as a tool to get in her pants (which pisses Martin off), and despite Kate being quite upset, Martin convinces her to let him live with her in the apartment. The next week, Leonard calls Douglas a whore (for selling out his connections and writing style), Izzy tells Martin she’s not sleeping with Leonard and kisses him, which upsets Kate even more. The next scene, Martin and Izzy are a furously-copulating couple, Kate turns in a story to Leonard (which he likes) that she’s written under someone else’s name, and Douglas tells Martin that Leonard was once condemned as a plagarist. The following week, Leonard reads Martin’s story and (after offhandedly mentioning to Martin that Izzy’s been cheating on him) tells him he’s brilliant and offers him a leg up in the world. Martin rejects him, calls him a bunch of names. Leonard ends the class for good. In the next scene, we’re in Leonard’s apartment: Martin knocks, looking for his money back for the uncompleted sessions. Kate is in the apartment already, now sleeping with Leonard. She and Martin make up (sort of), and she leaves. Martin finds Leonard’s writing on his desk and realizes he actually is kind of a genius. Leonard offers to help Martin again, Martin accepts.

It’s wayyyy better than that I promise. It’s so smart and so quick and so wordy and the characterization is freaking brilliant. I highly recommend both the parts of Kate and Izzy. And Martin. And Leonard. And if you’re a Douglas, I think he’s got a good speech in there too.

That said, I’m definitely a

KATE

so that’s who we’re looking at today.

This monologue comes at the part of the play where Kate has turned in a new piece of writing to Leonard without telling him she wrote it… and he liked it. VICTORY! Her first story, about an over-educated white girl pining on the themes of Jane Austen, didn’t go over well to say the least so she furiously started her first story in years: the memoir of a transvestite Cubano gang member who she “knows from Bennington” (her endlessly-referenced alma mater). It was a hit with Leonard, and Kate is now telling everyone about that fact. At this point in the story her relationship with Martin is very strained because he’s living in her apartment and fucking Izzy’s brains out on a regular basis… in the living room. She’s frustrated, but has been channeling that frustration into writing and the result is a win. It’s a big moment.

KATE: Yes I did and Leonard loved it. Fucker. Stupid fucking mother fucker. A Cubano transvestite gang member. And he loved it! Asshole.

DOUGLAS: You wrote it?

KATE: OF course I wrote it! His biggest objection to me is that I’m a rich white girl. Maybe if I’m not a rich white girl we can find out if I can write.

(... skipping a lot of text, where Martin pipes up, Kate shuts him down, and basically no one gives Kate the reaction she’s looking for, so...)

Well done, Kate! you not only pulled one over on Leonard who everyone in the room thinks is a flaming abusive BUTTHOLE, you came up with a terrific piece of writing! We know you’ve been feeling shitty about yourself because of the way Leonard treated you and you’ve been really nice to let MARTIN and IZZY use your apartment as a FUCKING LOVE NEST and well done, well done you must feel a lot better: that piece you wrote about the Cubano transvestite gang member is really smart and edgy and funny, you’re a writer after all. Well done.

(then, playing her part)

Thanks, thanks you guys. Thanks!

This whole play is genius and hilarous and smart. I actually can’t say enough good things about it (clearly), so go check it out. Also, as if the text itself weren’t enough, Alan Rickman (RIP) played Leonard when it appeared on Broadway in 2011 (legend has it that Rebeck wrote it for him, which I can totally buy.) I saw Jeff Goldblum play the part, personally, and it was fantastic. So imagine Rickman’s gorgeous voice when reading the text and it only gets better. Izzy’s got a good monologue to Martin later in the play, as well, when she tells him of course she was sleeping with Leonard the whole time. Check it out!

And as always,

if you choose this monologue

buy/read the whole play

and post a video of it here!

Thanks guys!

Once again, this has been

SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!