by Trilby James
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To what extent does her behaviour change from that of a girl to that of a woman and then back again? Some of her newfound insight points to an increased maturity. The play ends, however, with her drinking a glass of milk like a child. Does that suggest she will remain a little girl or does it imply that she is leaving the child behind and moving toward a new kind of womanhood? Perhaps milk is good for the unborn baby and Peta is determined to take care of it. What might this final image signify? You decide.
WHAT SHE WANTS
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To explain to Colin that she needed to exert her independence, even if it was short-lived.
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To reassure him that while they were apart she still needed him.
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To share with him the message in neon lettering that somehow symbolises their future together.
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To close one chapter of her life in order to move on to the next.
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For Colin to take her seriously.
KEYWORDS Crystal shell cry rubble
Peta
When I first got here I spent a day… a whole day on buses. I got a Travelcard and I just got on different buses. Like we did that day. I just thought I’d see where I ended up. But it wasn’t like when we did it. […] I went to Crystal Palace first. I thought… I imagined something different. Crystal Palace. I bought a fried-egg sandwich from this café… by the terminus. And it had shell in it. I wanted to cry. That made me want to cry. I felt about eight… or something. I wanted you. (Beat.) Then I got back on a bus and I went to Victoria and I got another bus. A 38. I just sat on it ’til I had to get off. And I got off and just walked for a bit… just walking. I turned down this road… this little road. It was just normal. Just houses, cars… but at the end of it was this sort of… it was like this Roman building like… huge columns… colonnades… a pointed-roof bit. Really gorgeous and a bit, you know… mad… because it was just there at the top of this road with houses and cars and that wasn’t the part though. Along the top of it… the whole width of it was – it wasn’t switched on but there were neon tubes. Lettering that said, ‘Everything’s going to be alright.’ Just that. Everything’s going to be alright. […] I went back yesterday – before I phoned yer… and it was just rubble. Thought I’d imagined it. Asked this woman cleaning the windows of her house. I asked her if it had said that and she said, ‘Yeah.’ I would have liked to show it to you but it isn’t there any more. That’s it.
How to Curse
Ian McHugh
WHO Miranda, seventeen, from Great Yarmouth.
TO WHOM The audience (see note on ‘Direct audience address’ in the introduction), and herself.
WHERE Her friend Nick’s bedsit on Great Yarmouth seafront.
WHEN Present day.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Miranda and Nick, both seventeen, hang out together. They are highly imaginative, love books and enjoy winding each other up with their literary arguments. Nick is obsessed with Shakespeare’s The Tempest and he and Miranda have been collecting random items in order to conjure a storm. But there is something missing. While Nick has cast himself in the role of Prospero, he needs someone who can perform his instructions as Ariel does in The Tempest. Then Nick and Miranda meet William, another seventeen-year-old, who Nick believes he can groom. Here in this monologue, Miranda is practising a magic trick.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
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Miranda’s love of literature and poetry. She says she read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar five times when she was about fourteen.
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Her rebellious nature. She asks William, ‘Do you ever get the urge to do purely wicked things, just for the sake of it?’
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Her father is a magician. She calls him ‘a total cock’. We gather that her mother does some sort of social work. She wants to move out of her parents’ home.
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She has a boyfriend called Francis, whom she met down the pub. We do not get the impression that she is in love with him.
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Her relationship with Nick, the ‘he’ to whom she refers in her speech, is volatile and intense. It is however platonic.
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The seafront at Great Yarmouth. The run-down nature of the town and the greyness of the North Sea. There is, however, something hugely atmospheric, even majestic about this English seaside town.
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‘Come unto these yellow sands’ is a quotation from Ariel in The Tempest.
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Make a decision about how you will perform the magic trick (see note on using props in the introduction). It is a well-known trick and can be purchased easily and cheaply online or in joke shops.
WHAT SHE WANTS
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To test her powers.
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A hit.
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To escape her otherwise boring life, which consists of hanging out in the precinct, at home or with Francis in the pub.
KEYWORDS buzzing sticking itches stillness debris shifted realigned configurations spell grabs drags
Miranda
As she speaks she performs a magic trick: she passes a green handkerchief through her closed fist several times; on the final pass it becomes a red handkerchief.
Haven’t you ever really wanted it? On one of those nights when the flies are buzzing round your face and sticking to your skin, and the back of your neck itches and you can hardly breathe? Haven’t you ever just wanted to see the sky light up and have the wind blow you sideways and the thunder press against your throat?
And what comes after. The stillness. The debris. How things have shifted and realigned. New configurations. Imbalances righted.
He had me half-convinced. I egged him on. Of course, I didn’t know how to do it, and nor did he. But it has to be possible, right?
She laughs.
No, me neither. But there was something beautiful about the way he worked. He wouldn’t give up. Someone must know.
It’s convincing, isn’t it? All these books. All those words, strung together. It’s like a spell. It is a spell. It’s very clever, how convincing it is. It’s a whole world; it exists, real as any other world. And it grabs hold of you, it drags you in. To the point at which your own world ceases to exist.
(As she completes the trick.) Come unto these yellow sands.
Immaculate
Oliver Lansley
WHO Rebecca, twenty-/thirty-something.
TO WHOM Mia, her best friend.
WHERE The living room of Mia’s flat.
WHEN Present day.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Despite splitting up from her ex-boyfriend Michael eleven and a half months ago, and despite not having had sex in all that time, Mia finds herself pregnant. It turns out that Mia has been supernaturally impregnated, but when the Archangel Gabriel and Lucifer both show up claiming parentage, nobody is sure by whom. (Hence the play’s title Immaculate as in the Immaculate Conception.) In the meantime, her best friend Rebecca has been (secretly) going out and having sex with Michael. Neither of them has told Mia. But when Michael finds out that Mia is pregnant and tells Rebecca, she immediately assumes (wrongly) that Michael is the father and that Mia and Michael are still sleeping with each other, and that Michael is in effect cheating on them both. She arrives at Mia’s flat to confront the situation.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
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The play is a farce, and while the characters are wholly believable, the situation is fantastic.
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The punctuation. The speech is long, but there are very few full stops. Before the speech there is the stage direction ‘all gabbled at an incredible rate’. Make sure, however, that the speech does not run away with you. Be aware of all the different thoughts and then the places where the thought changes. When you deliver the speech you will need to be not just speaking quickly but also thinking quickly. In this way, the speech will have variety.
WH
AT SHE WANTS
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To come clean about her relationship with Michael. Decide to what extent she needs Mia’s forgiveness.
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To express her hurt that she has been lied to, and at the same time to express her shame for having lied.
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To make sense of the confusion. Decide to what extent she blames herself for the situation. Note her terror of what the future might hold.
KEYWORDS (there are many, but note how often she uses the following) didn’t couldn’t weren’t haven’t don’t
Rebecca
Hi… Look, there’s something I have to say. I probably should have told you earlier, but I didn’t know if it was going anywhere but now I think it is, or thought it was, but now you’re pregnant, so I probably shouldn’t tell you anyway ’cause stress is bad for the baby, not that you’re keeping it, right? God, you’re huge, are those my boots…?
Look… Michael and I are together…
We’re a couple, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I didn’t plan it, I was out and saw Michael and said hello and we got talking and it came out that he’d always quite fancied me but couldn’t do anything about it obviously ’cause we were best mates and I said I quite fancied him too, which was why I was sometimes a bit of a bitch towards him because I think subconsciously I fancied him and I always used to talk to Ed about him, and that’s why Ed never wanted to come out with us in a foursome because he thought I fancied Michael which I didn’t, or didn’t think I did, but turns out I did, because I fancy him now, anyway, we weren’t going to do anything because you two had just broken up and I knew how pissed off you’d be but then we said, well, maybe we should just have a kiss, while we’re both single then, just to get it out of our systems, so we had a kiss, and then the kiss carried on, and things and things and we ended up having sex, which I’m not proud of but it was good, but it was bad because the condom broke and I had to get the morning-after pill, which was fucking awful and I was terrified ’cause I thought I was gonna have a baby, and you know how much I fucking hate babies ’cause of that dream I have with all the babies that have my mum and dad’s faces who shit and piss and cry and I can’t stop them! And also the pill made me feel really ill, and that was the day we were supposed to go to Bluewater to try and find some shoes to go with that brown skirt you got from Hennes and I said I couldn’t come ’cause I was sick and you were pissed off and I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t and I felt really guilty, and I cried, and then I called Michael and told him and he was really good about it and made me feel better, and we had decided we weren’t gonna see each other again, but I was crying on the phone so he came over and then he ended up staying the night again, but we didn’t have sex, we just cuddled and then it went from there.
But now you tell me that you’re pregnant and you say that you haven’t had sex with anyone since Michael, which means he must be the father but you don’t want to tell me because I made such a fuss about what a fucker he was when he dumped you. Which means you’re lying to me and he’s lying to me, and I’m lying to you, and you’re fucking him and I’m fucking him and he’s fucking you… and me… and I’m going to lose my best friend and my boyfriend, not that I call him my boyfriend but technically he is, and I’ll be helpless and hopeless and friendless and loveless and die old and alone with thread veins and bladder weakness and a houseful of cats…
Invisible
Tena Štivičić
WHO Lara, Eastern European, twenties.
TO WHOM An imagined interviewer.
WHERE The kitchen of a well-off household where she works as a cleaner.
WHEN The middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Lara is an Eastern European immigrant to London, fantasising about her future while in fact working as a cleaner. Before starting the speech, she shines a lamp directly onto her face, as if she were giving a television interview.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
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The hardship Lara has had to endure.
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Her bravery.
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Her ambition.
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Her refusal to be beaten.
WHAT SHE WANTS
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To assimilate into British culture.
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To maintain her dignity.
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To fantasise about her future in order to escape the pain of her present.
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To believe that her dream could become a reality.
KEYWORDS imagine tough hard cleaner/cleaning/clean ashamed fine expensive impressed friends
Lara
Would you like a cup of tea? Milk and sugar? I take it quite strong. You know, before I came here I couldn’t imagine putting milk in tea. And now I can’t get enough of it. (Pause.) Yes, it was tough the first few years. Very tough. But even when it was very hard… you learn things every day. Every day you are a little better at… living here. I can’t explain. First time I had A to Z in my hands, I wanted to cry. Then one day you just catch yourself going ‘5C, eighty-nine.’ (Pause as if to hear a question.) I worked as a cleaner. I don’t say that I was a cleaner, I just worked as a cleaner. I’m not ashamed of cleaning. You have to make money. I was a good cleaner because I clean houses like they were my own. And we are much more thorough with cleaning than English. Yes, I have a cleaner now. I treat her well. I’m not saying she’s my best friend but I take an interest. I never behave like she is not there. (Pause.) Well, this is how it happened. One lady I worked for, she was going to throw out some of her clothes. I asked if I could have them. They were very fine, expensive clothes. Then I went home and I changed them to fit me. I also changed the design a bit. When she saw what I did, she was impressed. She recommended me to a friend who had a company that makes clothes. So I started to work for him and slowly, little by little, I started my own business, making clothes. It’s doing very well now. Karen, that’s the lady I worked for, she and I are good friends now. She even wears the clothes I make now.
it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now
Lucy Kirkwood
WHO Dijana, Eastern European, twenty and then twenty-one, sex worker.
TO WHOM The audience (see note on ‘Direct audience address’ in the introduction), and her lost daughter.
WHERE A modern, sparsely decorated flat.
WHEN Present day.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED The speech comes close to the beginning of the play. As the lights come up, Dijana has just killed a bird, that had flown in through an open window, with a rolled-up newspaper. We soon discover that Dijana has been working as a prostitute and that she only needs thirty more pounds to make up the twenty thousand pounds she owes her pimp Babac in order for him to give her back her passport so that she can stop working in this way. She has calculated that her next client will be her very last and that the following morning she will ‘come to find you… We are going to swim in the sea… In Brighton’. It is at this point that we realise she is addressing her daughter, as if we the audience are that lost child. As she further contemplates the bird, she is reminded of something else that was strange this morning.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
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The play follows the plight of young women who have fallen prey to sex traffickers. It was produced by Clean Break theatre company, who work with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system.
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Dijana’s story was inspired by real-life events.
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Kingsland Road is in the London Borough of Hackney.
WHAT SHE WANTS
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To show that she can handle her situation, that she doesn’t need help and that she is in control. To what extent is this a front? A show of bravado? Note how proud Dijana is and how she uses humour to brush off painful feelings.
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Power over the men she sleeps with or at least an under
standing that she is their equal. Note how upset she becomes when her client assumes that she has not heard of Waitrose.
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To make it clear that she is not just a piece of meat. She is fully aware of the paradoxical nature of this man who, while supplying dead flesh to upmarket supermarkets, is in turn buying live flesh from the women who sell their bodies. The irony is not wasted on her.
KEYWORDS strange weird meat supplier pig prick
NB This play offers a number of other speeches from which to choose.
Dijana
[She] Picks up two bottles.
Look. Babac did not give me these I took them by myself from bootsthechemist.
L’Oréal shampoo. And conditioner too. Because I’m worth it!
She pulls her hair out of its ponytail like she’s in a shampoo advert and shakes her head in slow motion.
See.
But she doesn’t laugh.
This is extra funny because I know exactly how much I am worth. How many people can say this! I am worth one thousand euros because that is how much Babac pay for me.
To put this in easy language, that is like two-and-a-half iPhones.
Something strange happen this morning […] This guy, he come and we fuck. Just normal him on top once then in my mouth and he come on my tits but after he go something weird, he go
Ummm… do you want me to call someone?
And in my head I am like Yeah do you have number of a dentist cos your breath stink.
But I do not say out loud. I do not say nothing.
