Contemporary Monologues for Women
Page 9
WHAT SHE WANTS
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To free herself from the torment of that night. She is prompted by her therapist to recall it, but she can only get so far until she has to stop. Decide to what extent she wants to please her therapist as much as she wants to heal herself.
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To lead a normal life with a job and a boyfriend.
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To feel safe.
KEYWORDS (note how they are either something nice or menacing) friendly dark tired pretty sweets cake giggle nerves cranky heavy cosy
NB This play offers a number of other speeches from which to choose.
Vicky
Where was I? Oh.
Well, I – suppose we got to the hostel some time after eleven. We had left Paris early that evening and had been driving for three maybe, four hours in the dark. We were tired. We had started the journey singing, but – we weren’t singing by the time we arrived. The hostel was pretty. Lots of wood and watercolours on the walls. A friendly overweight woman had been waiting up for us – Madame… something. We could hear the sound of crickets or frogs in the distance all around – Denise was mimicking them but Mrs Lynch told her to stop. It was getting on her nerves. Everyone was cranky with the heat. We each got a glass of orange and a biscuit and then were sent to bed because of the early start. They split us into groups of two, six in each room. I took the bed beside Denise, of course.
Normally, we would’ve stayed up. Past curfew, you know. Talking. Or – or eating sweets, or little cakes that we, that we would’ve bought when Mrs Lynch or one of the other’s backs were turned and we would’ve giggled I guess. Little girls giggle. But that night we were so – after all the travelling. I didn’t brush my teeth. Denise did. And her hair. She – um – she had lovely black hair. Thick and straight. I’m sure – I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures. Everybody comments.
She brushed it a hundred times before going to bed at night. Every night. Imagine. I – well – I thought that was great. I don’t think she managed one hundred that night but she – did as many as she could. And then. Well, then we went to bed. In our little white nighties. I don’t think we even said goodnight. Our eyes were that heavy. Denise had her back to me. I could see the outline of her shoulders underneath the sheets and we just – drifted off. You see it was that sort of place, the hostel. It felt – cosy.
I can understand why the Madame said she never thought to lock the doors.
Little Gem
Elaine Murphy
WHO Amber, eighteen, Dubliner.
TO WHOM The audience (see note on ‘Direct audience address’ in the introduction).
WHERE In a cubicle of the toilets at the call centre where she works, and then at her desk in the call centre.
WHEN Present day.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Amber, recently out of school, and besotted with her new boyfriend Paul, has been enjoying regular nights on the town. Last night she was drinking vodka, smoking spliffs with Paul and his friends, and did ‘a line of coke’ with her best friend Jo. She was upset because Paul had been flirting with other women and keeps talking about wanting to go to Australia (without her). Amber’s friend Jo says that, until someone else comes along, Amber is just a ‘handy hole’ for Paul. Nevertheless she spends the night with Paul, and when she wakes up in the morning she feels terrible and is sick in Paul’s bathroom. Ordinarily, she would ‘pull a sicky’ and not go in to work, but it was Jo’s father who got her the job and she feels a sense of loyalty. Once at work she feels ill again and rushes to the toilets where she meets Mandy from the accounts department. Mandy ‘jokes’ with her saying that she ‘hope’s it’s not morning sickness’. Amber, worried by this, asks Jo to cover for her while she goes to the chemist to buy a pregnancy test. The speech starts with her sitting on the toilet waiting for the result.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
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The play is a series of interwoven monologues telling the story of a year in the life of Amber, her mother Lorraine and her grandmother Kay.
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Amber is an only child.
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Her father is a drug addict and no longer lives with the family. He stole to feed his habit, and when Amber was younger he stole her confirmation money. To what extent has her relationship with her father affected her ability to form intimate and trusting relationships with men? Note how Amber has chosen a boyfriend who is afraid of commitment and note how jealous she becomes when he talks to other women.
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Her relationship with her mother is fraught. Lorraine is taking medication for depression and neither woman feels they can open up to each other.
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Amber is closer to her grandmother than to her mother. When she finds out she is pregnant she tells her grandmother first.
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Is her appetite for drink and drugs that of a regular eighteen-year-old recently out of school (and part of a general culture of binge-drinking and partying)? Or does it suggest to you that Amber is an emotionally damaged character and is using drugs and alcohol as a way of escaping painful experiences?
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To what extent does she use humour and bravado as a way of dealing with her problems and masking her vulnerability?
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How might it feel to be pregnant by someone who doesn’t love you? And in circumstances that are far from romantic?
WHAT SHE WANTS
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To find out whether she is pregnant. Decide to what extent she would secretly like this. ‘If I was… Paul’d have to…’ Despite her fears, perhaps she hopes that being pregnant will bring her and Paul closer together.
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To figure out when the conception took place.
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To come to terms with what has happened.
KEYWORDS pregnant ma da yokes necrophilia baby
NB This play offers a number of other speeches from which to choose.
Amber
In two minutes I’ll get an ‘accurate’ reading. Imagine me being pregnant? Like, a ma. There’s no way. Imagine Paul being a da! That’s mad. Like, I know I’ve nothing to worry about but Mandy has my head doing fucking overtime. My yokes are always all over the place but… I actually can’t remember when I got my last one. If I was… Paul’d have to… (Looks at the strip.) Oh my God, my heart. Negative. I knew it. Open the door; show Jo. The fucking relief. I knew it, but you know… Jo checks the box, then checks it again. She says it’s positive. Give over, an ‘X’ means no. She turns it a bit and says: ‘Plus means positive.’ Bollix.
Sitting at my desk waiting for calls to come through. I’m on directory enquiries today for an English phone company. This fella rings in, looking for a cab firm in Hackney. He doesn’t know the name of the place or the road it’s on but it’s definitely somewhere in Hackney, yeah… Do I not know it? How would I bleedin’ know it? I’m about to start a search, but it feels too much like work and he’s been real ignorant so I cut him off. Trying to remember when the fuck it could’ve happened cos in fairness we’re always real careful. I’ve done three pregnancy tests and they all say the same thing.
There was this one night, when we got back to his gaff and I was wrecked. Was lying there waiting for the bed to stop spinning so I could climb aboard the night train. He was off somewhere – probably playing that fucking Xbox with Stee – then he comes in and starts nudging me.
‘You awake? You awake? You awake?’
‘Well, I am now.’
Was so knackered, did the starfish – you know – (She stretches out her arms and legs and flails about a bit.) decked out, no energy. He’s going at it like a mad thing and I don’t know… Must’ve nodded off – only for a minute, mind – cos then I heard – ‘Oh shite, Amber, it’s split! Amber! Amber! Amber!’
I’m like, ‘What, what, what?’
‘Were you asleep?’ He says, disgusted.
‘Nooo, I had me eyes closed cos I was getting really into it.’
At that stage I could feel my headache starting so I just said: ‘Fuck off.’
But the next day I said to me ma: ‘Here, what does necrophilia mean?’
The look on her face was pure horror.
‘What weird shit are you getting up?’
‘Ah, nothing,’ says I. ‘Heard it on the telly.’
It must be really bad – like when they poo on ye or something. Maybe it’s his posh way of saying I’m shite in the sack. He does that sometimes, uses big words I don’t understand, bet the cunt doesn’t know what it means either. We hardly made a baby outta that, did we?
Love and Information
Caryl Churchill
WHO Unspecified. We assume the speaker is a woman.
TO WHOM Unspecified. We assume to a lover.
WHERE Unspecified. We assume at the entrance to her house. You decide.
WHEN Present day.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED The speech that follows is from a duologue entitled ‘Manic’. It is one of over seventy short scenes that go to make up Caryl Churchill’s full-length play Love and Information.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
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The play is in seven sections. Within the sections there are several scenes. These scenes can be played in any order. There is no indication about what age or sex the characters are, other than the content of what is written. Here, we assume the speaker is a woman talking to her lover, for no other reason than red roses are traditionally the gift of a man to a woman. However, this need not be the case. The flowers may even be tulips or carnations, for example. Use the opportunity to create a character for yourself and make a decision about to whom exactly you are speaking.
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The scene is entitled ‘Manic’. It is a clear indication of her state of mind. Make sure that you stay on top of her thoughts, however, and that the script does not run away with you. As you can see, there is only one full-stop in the speech right at the end.
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The writer cleverly captures both the joy of receiving the flowers and the resulting discombobulation about what vase to use and how they should be arranged.
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How a simple gift and, in particular, the colour red triggers her fears about life and death. Note how she struggles to convince herself that things will be all right.
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Within the play there are over one hundred other voices all trying to cope with an information overload.
WHAT SHE WANTS
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To thank her lover.
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To reassure herself that red does not necessarily signify death and destruction.
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To reassure her lover that he/she will be quite safe.
KEYWORDS red blood anger death
NB This play offers a number of other speeches from which to choose.
Unspecified
My god, look at that flower, thank you so much, have you ever seen such a red, red is blood and bullfights and seeing red is anger but red is joyful, red is celebration,
[…]
in China red is lucky how lucky we are to have red flowers,
[…]
in China white is death and here black is death but ghosts are white of course so a chessboard is death against death, and blood of course could be death but it’s lifeblood isn’t it, if you look at the flower it’s so astounding
[…]
it means so much to me that you gave me red flowers because red is so significant don’t you think? it means stop and of course it means go because it’s the colour of energy and red cars have the most accidents because people are excited by red or people who are already excited like to have red, I’d like to have red, I’ll buy a red car this afternoon and we can go for a drive, we can go right up through the whole country don’t you think, we can go to Scotland we can go to John o’ Groats, did he eat a lot of porridge do you think? but we don’t have to start from Land’s End or Land’s Beginning we should say if we start from there but we won’t we’ll start from here because here is always the place we start from, isn’t that funny, and I need to drive along all the roads in the country because I have to see to the traffic because there are too many cars as everyone knows but our car won’t be one too many you’ll be quite safe, we’ll make sure it’s all flowing smoothly in every direction because cars do go in every direction possible and everything goes in every possible direction, so we’ll find a vase for the flowers,
[…]
I think a green vase because of the primary colours and if they were blue I’d put them in an orange vase and if they were yellow I’d put them in a purple vase, yellow and purple is Easter of course so that’s why crocuses, and red and green is Christmas which isn’t right now of course it’s the wrong time of year, I might have to sort that out when I’ve got a minute.
Loyal Women
Gary Mitchell
WHO Brenda, thirty-three, Northern Irish, Protestant.
TO WHOM Jenny, her daughter, sixteen.
WHERE The living room of their house, Belfast.
WHEN Present day.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Brenda’s husband and Jenny’s father, Terry, has recently been released from prison after serving sixteen years for a crime that he did not commit. During the course of the play we discover that it was Brenda who killed a Catholic woman suspected of being a member of the IRA and in order to protect Brenda (and as Brenda suggests, in order to escape family obligations), it is Terry who falsely admits to the crime and is charged with the woman’s murder. On his release from prison, Terry maintains that he wants to resume where he left off – to join his wife and child and to live at last as a family, but as soon as he is out of prison he sleeps with another woman and Brenda is unable to forgive him. Meanwhile, Brenda has been coerced into further dealings with the women of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). She has been instructed to sort out a situation between a local Protestant girl and her Catholic boyfriend. Jenny is impressed by the women members of the UDA who visit Brenda and wants to join them, but Brenda regards them as thugs and wants Jenny to have nothing to do with them. Here Brenda attempts to explain to Jenny the truth about what happened, the truth about her father and their relationship and about the dangers of getting involved with the UDA and their rough kind of justice.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
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The history and politics of Northern Ireland. Take time to research these subjects, if they are not already familiar to you. When you have read the whole play and are clear about the issues raised you will have a greater understanding of Brenda’s situation and the strength of her passion.
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The hold an organisation like the UDA can have over the local residents.
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Also living in the house are Terry’s bedridden mother and Jenny’s crying baby. To what extent is Brenda trapped by circumstance and also by her own sense of duty?
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In Terry’s absence, Brenda has made friends with Mark, who has been doing odd jobs around the house. Although their relationship is platonic he would clearly like to become more intimate.
WHAT SHE WANTS
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To reveal the truth about what happened. To what extent is this a relief for her? To what extent does it leave her exposed and vulnerable? Does it bring her closer to Jenny, or does it create a further rift between them?You decide.
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To tell Jenny about her relationship with Jenny’s father. How easy/difficult is it for Brenda to say these things. However badly Terry has behaved, he is, after all, Jenny’s father and she knows that Jenny loves him.
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To prevent her daughter from any involvement with the UDA.
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To save her daughter from making the same mistakes that she did.
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Atonement/To atone.
KEYWORDS owe superhero kill believed death never head-ba
nger blame
Brenda
Maybe I do owe him something. Jenny, your dad is a superhero. He went to prison for me because I was told by people like your new best friends who are also superheroes to go and kill a young Catholic woman who was in the IRA and coming into our area to set people up and I believed them and I did it just like I believed this superhero when he told me ’til death us do part. I suppose he left that bit out as usual. See that’s the thing about him, he never tells the whole story, just the part that makes him look good. […] I didn’t know if she was in the IRA or not. I just took their word for it because I was young and I believed them. I was a teenager like you. A real head-banger but I grew up and I learned things – like how to think for myself and look after myself and how to prioritise. I used to have a list it read like this: Protestants, Ulster, the Queen, Britain and fuck everything else but I changed that list to me, my mum, my daughter and her daughter and that’s the way it will stay. […] He’s trying to make you think that he did the right thing. Let me tell you what he did. He ran away from you. He didn’t want me to go to prison and leave him here with you. And his mum, did I mention her? He wanted to get away from her and he wanted to get away from me and I don’t really blame him we weren’t a great couple obviously. But he was the great love of my life. The one and only in fact if you must know. And my other great love was my country and look how that turned out. You could say both of them have let me down.
Memory
Jonathan Lichtenstein
WHO Eva, thirty, a Jew.
TO WHOM Felix, a Nazi.