Contemporary Monologues for Women

by Trilby James

  DAD tries to hide under the blanket. She continues with conviction.

  It’s all yellow with pink dots and I fasten it around my chest… as if I had anything to hide. I’ve got awful problems fastening the bikini but then feel the long fingers of Mam click me into shape and pat me on the head. I smell the hand cream on her fingers. I look at her fingers made rough from all the pastry. All those millions of vol-au-vents turning her hands to cake. All for you and that fucking shop. I tell her that she’s beautiful because to me she is. As usual she stays quiet and we get the bus to the beach with the summer heat sending the bus shimmering towards our stop. ‘Might Dad one day blow up, Mam?’ I think that was the question I asked. And she started to laugh. The people on the bus turned and smiled because her laugh was so loud and happy. I had a good old laugh meself thinking of you blowing up in our new fitted kitchen all over the Formica worktops. In my laugh I let a fart which made Mam laugh even louder. All laughed out we lay in the water as the tide tippled up over us and both looking up towards the sun. Scrunched-up faces. I turned over and lay on Mam and kissed the salt off her face. The dry sea salt on her beautiful face like she were a frosted bun I told her. And then she hugged me so hard it almost squeezed the air out of my inflatable-swan ring. That was nice. And that’s when I went for a walk. I left Mam lying on the beach. That would be the last time I would see her as a healthy girl. I walked over the dunes spying on the teenagers snatching at their crotches. I talked to a priest sunbathing with the Bible and his crippled mother who sucked on oranges like they were going out of fashion. He read the story about Jesus in the desert to me and squatted a wasp with the Gospel of St John. Squished it dead. I walked on pretending that I was Jesus in search of water with only hours to live. I pretended I was a desert rabbit and ran through the sharp rushes like a right mad yoke. The rushes like nasty pins and needles firing me faster and faster and faster and faster. The soft sand sent spitting from my heels. My skinny arms and legs a mad blur. My springy hair springing out straight from my speed. My head free. Free of you and that fucking furniture talk. And then I felt no ground underneath me. Like the dog in the Roadrunner cartoons I tried running in the air. It was sort of funny until I fell down. And I fell down into this big hole. And right up to my waist I was covered in shit. I soon stopped trying to catch any clean air and just breathed in the shit air. I had a little puke. Puked up the cola bottles I ate on the bus. I wiped my mouth of the puke with a hand covered in shit. I spat the shit out and started to climb up a little ladder out of the concrete hole. And I didn’t even cry. And that’s the story of the day I got the polio. From then on everything went mad, didn’t it? And ya know a day doesn’t go past where I think I should have stayed in that place. How fucking happy I’d be.

  Boys

  Ella Hickson

  WHO Sophie, graduating student, middle class, from Southern England.

  TO WHOM Mack, her secret lover.

  WHERE The kitchen of a student flat in Edinburgh.

  WHEN Present day, summer.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Mack, Cam, Timp and Benny share a flat in Edinburgh. It is the end of term, Mack and Benny are graduating and the contract is up on their flat. The boys have been partying. The festivities continue the following evening when the boys are joined by Timp’s girlfriend Laura and Sophie, who we soon understand is having a secret relationship with Mack. It becomes apparent that Sophie used to go out with Benny’s brother Peter. Peter has recently hanged himself. During the course of the evening Sophie confesses to Laura that she is in love with Mack and that it was while she was still with Peter that she started seeing him. She explains to Laura that Mack had told her that before anything could happen between them she would have to choose between him and Peter. Laura then makes the connection between Peter’s suicide and Sophie’s choice. Immediately after this conversation with Laura, Mack enters and in a snatched moment between them Sophie broaches the subject.

  WHAT TO CONSIDER

  •

  The play takes place over a twenty-four-hour period.

  •

  It is hot and the dustbins have not been cleared. The smell of rotting rubbish permeates the scenes.

  •

  Inside, the action is fuelled by drugs and alcohol.

  •

  Outside, while the flatmates are revelling, a riot is taking place.

  WHAT SHE WANTS

  •

  To confess to her lack of feeling about Peter’s suicide.

  •

  To gain reassurance that she is not a bad person.

  •

  To justify her happiness in the wake of someone else’s misery.

  •

  To profess her love to Mack. Note how vulnerable this leaves her.

  •

  To understand what it means to love and to be loved.

  •

  To illicit a response from Mack. (For him to tell her that he loves her, thereby making it all all right.)

  KEYWORDS guilt grief feel joy peace

  Sophie

  Do you; have you ever actually felt any – guilt? Because it’s come as a bit of a surprise that um, that – you, one, I don’t, can’t actually feel it. Like I can’t get my body to do it, on its own, it’s not something I can generate somehow, like, I – I find myself having to actually summon it, trying to encourage myself, to summon it and even then I can’t do it, really, I can’t feel it. I thought it might be shock at first and then – grief or but I think I might not feel it. I can’t. I don’t. All I can feel is total joy, total – peace. I look at you and I sometimes actually make myself think of him, I force him into my head and I don’t feel guilty. What does that mean? What kind of person does that make me? (Pause.) Hm? Sometimes I think it’s because – what we have is love, meant to be. (Laughs.) That we love each other, yes, Mack, that is what I sometimes think. Is that ridiculous? And sometimes I even think that that love is so important that it is bigger, or equal to – what he did. That they are just two feelings, one is love and the other is despair and both just have an action. And that those actions are different but that somehow they are equal – does that make me a monster? I sat at his funeral looking at his parents and Benny but all I could think of, all I could feel – was you.

  But then I look at you and I wonder if it’s actually there. I wonder if I added up the amount of minutes, hours, fucking days I have spent thinking about you, the amount of fucking longing I have done – if I added that up and weighed it against anything you have ever actually said… and – (Pause.)

  But then you do the smallest thing you make me a cup of tea when I don’t ask, or you touch my hand really lightly in a room full of people and I think no, Sophie, don’t laugh – don’t laugh because it’s real and it’s so much more real because it’s unsaid and unspoken and un – un – un – it’s so much more real because I can’t touch it, because we can’t say it and I can’t see it, it’s so much more real because I don’t know if it’s there.

  Pause. MACK doesn’t say anything.

  Please say something. (Pause.) Please. Please tell me if…

  She trails off unable to try any harder.

  Brontë

  Polly Teale

  WHO Anne, twenty-eight.

  TO WHOM Charlotte, her sister.

  WHERE The kitchen of the Parsonage at Haworth on the Yorkshire Moors.

  WHEN Autumn 1848, shortly after the death of her brother Branwell.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED The play depicts incidents both real and imaginary in the lives of the Brontë sisters and their brother Branwell. It moves backwards and forwards in time and is intermixed with characters from the Brontës’ novels. At this point in the play, Charlotte is enjoying much literary success following the publication of Jane Eyre. Anne and Charlotte travel to London, but on their return their brother Branwell dies. A short time later, while Anne is sorting through Branwell’s clothes, Charlotte, who is trying to write, complains of the pressure she feels to deliver a second and fu
rther outstanding piece of work. The speech is made up of Anne’s response to this and then supplemented by a passage she has a few lines later in which she questions their need to write at all.

  WHAT TO CONSIDER

  •

  Anne wrote Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Reading her novels will give you greater insight.

  •

  Anne’s writing was more socially and politically motivated than her sisters. She had a keen sense of injustice and was particularly concerned about poor working conditions. As Polly Teale points out in her introduction to the play, this was a time of great social upheaval. The Industrial Revolution was underway, and Anne would have witnessed many changes.

  •

  She views the need to write and to be heard as something of a sickness.

  •

  Unless it is able to bring about change, Anne considers her art to be pointless.

  •

  The sisters are grieving the loss of their brother Branwell. His death and the circumstances surrounding it are the ‘recent events’ to which she refers.

  •

  Charlotte has paid for Branwell’s funeral and cleared all his debts with the money she had received from her publisher.

  •

  Branwell was a complex man. He suffered many addictions, was an alcoholic and died aged thirty-one.

  •

  Their mother died when Anne was barely one year old, which goes some way to explaining her and her siblings’ make-up.

  •

  Keighley is pronounced ‘Keethly’.

  WHAT SHE WANTS

  •

  To protect her sister.

  •

  To open Charlotte’s eyes to a different way of living that involves simple tasks and pleasures so that they may achieve peace and contentment.

  •

  To create value and to be useful to society.

  •

  To belong to something bigger than herself. Note how she longs to be part of a busy workforce.

  •

  To question and to understand their restlessness. ‘Why is it not enough to be?’ Perhaps you may like to draw on your own feelings and attitude to acting in order to understand this need to be heard. I would suggest that it is not that much different.

  KEYWORDS renounce honest practicality afflicted thrum activity labours use

  Anne

  Do you ever wonder what our lives would have been had we never put pen to paper? Had we never been afflicted by that curious condition which must have you turn life into words. Yesterday, coming back from Keighley through the wood, I was looking at the trees, at the autumn light, and trying to describe it, for it is autumn in my story, when I came upon the blackberry-pickers. They sang as they worked. There’s not a soul amongst them can read or write and yet I thought I would give anything to be one of them, to be part of that great thrum of life and activity. To see the fruit of your labours in front of you at the end of the day and to know that it will be of use to others. They stopped when they saw me watching. They took off their hats and nodded and I knew that they wanted me gone. It was not a performance. The singing was not for me or anyone else. It was for its own sake. Like breathing, they did it without knowing. They didn’t need anyone to hear. (Pause.) Why do we need someone to hear us? Why is it not enough to be? […] Why do we do it? […] Why us? Why always? As far back as I remember. […] I used to think we could change things. That by telling the truth we would make a better world. […] There are people living in poverty, terrible injustice and suffering and we… we write. […] What do we want? What is it for?

  Bull

  Mike Bartlett

  WHO Isobel, a young professional.

  TO WHOM Thomas, her ex-colleague.

  WHERE An office.

  WHEN Present day.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Isobel and her two male colleagues, Thomas and Tony, wait for their boss Carter to arrive. Carter is performing an office ‘cull’ and will sack one of them today. In order to safeguard their positions, Isobel and Tony have ganged up on Thomas. They bully him and convince Carter that Thomas is the one who should be fired. The speech that follows comes at the very end of the play following Thomas’s dismissal.

  WHAT TO CONSIDER

  •

  The insecurity of the job market and the brutality of the workplace.

  •

  In the original production the set resembled a boxing or wrestling ring.

  •

  The play makes reference to and is reminiscent of The Apprentice.

  •

  Isobel is described variously as ‘a bitch’, ‘icy’, ‘frozen’, ‘hard’, ‘tight’ and ‘anal’.

  •

  She says she is like that because she was sexually abused by her father. Thomas maintains that she is lying. You decide.

  •

  When she says she feels sorry for him, is it genuine, or is it mocking?

  •

  Make a decision about why she chooses to tell him all this. She could just as easily have left it.

  •

  What might she gain from going in for the kill in this way, and what does it suggest about the world in which she lives?

  •

  Note the unusual layout of the speech. First, short sentences each given their own line, followed by two/three longish paragraphs. What might this suggest about her thought patterns and what happens to her when she gets into her stride?

  WHAT SHE WANTS

  •

  To flatten Thomas.

  •

  To crush him.

  •

  To kill in order to survive.

  KEYWORDS tough shit ex crucial

  NB This play offers a number of other speeches from which to choose.

  Isobel

  I feel really sorry for you. […]

  No Thomas I feel really sorry. I do. I promise. I do. I’m feeling sorrow. Right now.

  You have a kid don’t you?

  You do.

  I know you do.

  So.

  So you don’t need to hide it.

  You have a kid.

  […]

  Yeah. Tough. What’s its name?

  Is it Harry?

  It is Harry.

  I know it is.

  You know how I know this?

  It’s because once when we left work, I was walking behind you and you walked all the way down the road, and I could see you in front of me, and I saw you meet this woman in a coffee shop it wasn’t a nice coffee shop I was surprised you went into it, it was a Costa or something not even a good one a shit Costa, and I watched you meet this woman and she had a little toddling little thing, and I waited and I saw you go to the loo, and then I ran in and said oh I was hoping to catch you and I pretended I was in a hurry, and I had a little chat with Marion, is that her name your ex and she told me about Harry, and I said I was a colleague and you were taking ages in the toilet actually we talked about it we didn’t know what you were up to in there, but it meant we had a good talk about you, and in the end when you still didn’t come out I said I needed to dash and I’d catch you tomorrow instead, but that conversation with her gave me quite a lot of crucial information.

  Which I’ve always known when you’ve tried to hide things or lie or whatever, I’ve always known about your life things that you don’t know I know. I know you have to pay Marion that certain amount every month and when she hears that you’re out of work her low estimation of you will drop even further it will I promise she won’t be surprised that’s the really tragic thing for you, she won’t be like oh my God you lost your job! Oh my God! She’ll be like, yeah of course he lost his job fucking retard good thing I got out while I could, better not let him see Harry too much don’t want Harry to grow up in the distorted disabled image of his fucking drip drip of a father.

  I expect that’s what she’ll think.

  It’s tough isn’t it, life.

  Is it a lot more difficult t
han you imagined it would be?

  I mean I’m sure you thought it was difficult but that through sheer hard work, and practice and training and long hours and inspiration and in your case perspiration you would come through and in the end, succeed, because you thought that despite everything, it was, in this country at least, a meritocracy and that fair play and honest, transparent behaviour at work would be rewarded in the end. That bad people like me would fall at the wayside and good people like you would triumph.

  That’s what you thought isn’t it?

  Oops.

  Bunny

  Jack Thorne

  WHO Katie, eighteen, from Luton.

  TO WHOM The audience (see note on ‘Direct audience address’ in the introduction).

  WHERE Various locations in Luton.

  WHEN Present day.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Katie has met her older boyfriend Abe, a twenty-four-year-old black man, at the school gates. It is a hot day, and Abe goes to buy an ice cream. As he eats it walking down the street, a boy on a bicycle comes past and knocks his ice cream out of his hand. Abe reacts instinctively and kicks the wheels of the bike, sending the boy flying. A fight then breaks out between the two with Katie looking on in surprise. She then somewhat randomly tells us about how she envies the way fat people can eat with abandon.

  WHAT TO CONSIDER

  •

  The whole play is one long monologue. In it, Katie tells the story of what happened that afternoon. The events are interwoven with reminiscences of further episodes in her life largely to do with family, boyfriends and school.