Best Monologues from the Best American Short Plays, Volume Three
Copyright © 2015 by William W. Demastes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.
Published in 2015 by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
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Book design by Lynn Bergesen
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Best Monologues from The Best American Short Plays / edited by William W. Demastes. volumes cm. — (The Applause Acting Series)
ISBN 978-1-4803-3155-6 (volume 1) — ISBN 978-1-4803-8548-1 (volume 2) — ISBN 978-1-4803-9740-8 (volume 3)
1. Monologues, American. 2. American drama—20th century. 3. American drama—21st century. I. Demastes, William W., editor of compilation.
PS627.M63B47 2014
812'.04508—dc23
2013041949
www.applausebooks.com
contents
Introduction: Speech Acts by William W. Demastes
Part I: Monologues for Men
Kimberly La Force Excerpt from A Marriage Proposal
Douglas Soderberg Excerpt from The Root of Chaos
Michael Ross Albert Excerpt from Starfishes
Shel Silverstein Excerpt from The Trio
Darren Canady Excerpt from You’re Invited!
Mac Wellman Excerpt from The Sandalwood Box
Brent Englar Excerpt from Snowbound
Lisa Soland Excerpt from Spatial Disorientation
James Armstrong Excerpts from The Rainbow
Murray Schisgal Excerpt from The Hysterical Misogynist
Craig Pospisil Excerpt from Dissonance
David Rusiecki Excerpt from Kid Gloves
Cary Pepper Excerpts from Come Again, Another Day
John Guare Blue Monologue
Murray Schisgal Naked Old Man
John Guare What It Was Like
Lawrence Thelen Ichabod Crane Tells All
Murray Schisgal Queenie
Shel Silverstein The Devil and Billy Markham
A. K. Abeille and David Manos Morris A Little Haunting
Jean-Claude van Itallie and Joseph Chaikin Struck Dumb
Part II: Monologues for Women
Mac Wellman Excerpts from The Sandalwood Box
Darren Canady Excerpt from You’re Invited!
Kyle John Schmidt Excerpt from St. Matilde’s Malady
John Bolen Excerpt from A Song for Me, or Getting the Oscar
Gabriel Rivas Gomez Excerpt from Scar Tissue
Craig Pospisil Excerpts from Dissonance
Lisa Soland Excerpt from Spatial Disorientation
Jonathan Fitts Excerpt from White or the Muskox Play
Patrick Holland Excerpt from The Cowboy
Angela C. Hall Excerpt from Wife Shop
Andrea Sloan Pink Excerpts from Warner Bros.
Crystal Skillman Excerpt from Rise
Edith Freni Excerpt from Flare
Janet Allard Creatures
Leslie Ayvazian Deaf Day
Susan Miller Excerpts from It’s Our Town, Too
Credits and Permissions
introduction
Speech Acts
“You’re fired.” “I baptize you in the name of . . .” “Give me two snow cones.” “Those are ugly shoes.” “Oh, that this too, too, solid flesh would melt, thaw, resolve itself into a dew.” Language is a funny thing, serving humanity in any number of ways by helping us as we struggle to find common cause and establish community in an increasingly crowded but ever alienating world.
Renowned philosopher of language J. L. Austin (1911–1960) spent a career trying to do what most philosophers of language try to do: make sense of human language. He famously popularized the term “speech act,” identifying language as something that has performance qualities even though “speech” doesn’t actually “act” in any way that we typically describe as “action.” It doesn’t move things, or touch things, or do much of anything like that. “Stop talking and do something” is a typical response to the perennial advice giver. There’s a line between doing and talking that we all pretty much understand. The problem with that common perception, and one that Austin recognized, is that some forms of speech do do things that can be called “acts.”
Telling someone they’re fired certainly has an impact almost as stunning as being hit by a hammer. Declaring someone baptized, or married, or divorced are pretty significant transformative pronouncements, literally converting someone from one kind of person into another. Asking for a snow cone is a gesture that one hopes will lead to a refreshing response, especially on a hot summer day. Criticizing someone’s shoes may actually encourage the person to change into something more appealing. These words interact with the physical world and actually have some sort of influence on our surroundings. They’re speech acts.
But what about wishing our too, too imperfect bodies would just dissolve and somehow leave nothing behind but the perfection of our souls (in a perfectly idealized world where nothing corrupts or decays)? Is it possible that these opening lines to Hamlet’s famous first monologue/soliloquy may actually “do” something? Perhaps it’s a perfectly worded sentiment that summarizes exactly how you sometimes feel about this mixed-up, jumbled-up, shook-up world, and it speaks to exactly how you want to deal with it: by simply fading away. Or maybe you never thought about the world in that way at all. Maybe you’ve been living with some queasy feeling about the world for some time now, but never quite knew what it was you were feeling. Maybe you didn’t quite know what it was you were feeling because you never quite knew how to put it into words. Now, however, you’ve seen your thought perfectly expressed (though Shakespeare’s poetic phrasing might not be how you would have said this), and now you move forward in life with greater focus because now you know with precision what vague, queasy sentiments had previously been coursing through your veins. “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt” has become for you a transformative speech that gains the name of action by actually altering or focusing what you believe and therefore who you are.
Speech acts. I’m using Shakespeare here because he helps me show what a great phrase “speech acts” is when it comes to describing what happens onstage when actors arrive and find an audience willing to attend to what they have to say. The stage is the space that relies on speech to carry out action. Physical stage actions do occur, of course. People do get into each other’s space; they do move about in a choreography of significance. Props are used, and people do interact with them. Physical gestures can make or break an acting style. People touch, gesture, exit. But in the theater it is the language that carries the day. We go for the words.
And when we go to the theater, we go to hear those words spoken by someone, bringing language into direct contact with the physical and engaging the physical before our very eyes. Novels, poetry, the newspaper all have “speech acts” embedded in them, of course. And the streets, our offices, shopping centers, our homes—they are all full of speech acts. But
the theater gives us pause to think about these “words, words, words.”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Really? Words can break spirits, destroy confidence. They can also build hope and incite great acts of heroism. Playwrights know this, and so do theater audiences. Otherwise, why go? How about “what’s in a name”? Call a rose skunk weed and maybe it really won’t smell as sweet. How easy was it for Romeo to deny his name (or his father)? Romeo he was, and a Montague he remained, despite his naive teenage decision to get out from under the curse of that name. Consequences follow. Words matter and carry clout every bit as dangerous as a hammer or crowbar. This too playwrights know.
The theater, in short, is the laboratory for speech acts. Authors string words together with the complex goal of pulling together disparate audience members into a single attentive community. Even if the goal is to bring everyone together for one single moment of unified laughter, or perhaps a gasp of surprise—even if that small effect is the goal, then the playwright has taken on a pretty daunting and very complex task.
Sometimes playwrights have a political or personal agenda in mind and use the theater to transform an audience’s beliefs and attitudes. Is it possible to eliminate or at least minimize such destructive forces as racism, sexism, or nationalism by changing people’s beliefs and attendant actions? If so, then speech acts have had their impact.
When it comes to thinking about these transformations, it is generally very difficult to distinguish between conscious and unconscious behavioral shifts. There is little doubt, however, that unconscious shifts have more profound and longer lasting effect. And they are harder to generate as well. So, for instance, walking out of a theater and realizing that Native Americans are a nearly forgotten but still mistreated minority may result in immediate corrective action of one sort or another. We could call that a soft-wiring alteration. But to be exposed in subtle but visceral ways to the persistent, grinding dehumanization that generates discrimination, and to have it somehow sink beneath our consciousness and into our unconscious beings, that’s a hard-wire change. How to do these things?
The monologues in this volume are full of speech acts. Some will generate direct action in the form of joyful laughter or the chill of surprise. Others will usher us into worlds we’ve never experienced, or perhaps into worlds experienced long ago but linger at the furthest edges of memory. Still others may help us alter the way we see certain things, people, or beliefs. I find two works particularly intriguing in this volume. Deaf Day by Leslie Ayvazian is a vignette covering a troubling day in the life of a mother dealing with her deaf child. Struck Dumb by Jean-Claude van Itallie and Joseph Chaikin presents an aphasic character struggling to regain his control over language. Both remind us of the gift of language. They remind us, in particular, of what we see in all the monologues in this volume: the power and grit of speech acts found in even the “slightest” of pieces. We are reminded by these two works also that speech acts require interaction: speaker and recipient are of equal importance. So do enjoy your read, imagining in your mind’s eye exactly how the staged performance might appear.
Best Monologues from The Best American Short Plays, Volume Three, is a collection of monologues drawn from the popular Best American Short Plays series, an archive of works from many of the best playwrights active today. Long or short, serious or not, excerpts or otherwise, this collection abounds in speech acts that may trigger physical reactions and almost certainly will transform an attitude or two, drawing out lost memories, creating new ones, and definitely entertaining, engaging, and amusing us all along the way.
—William W. Demastes
Louisiana State University
Part I
Monologues for Men
Kimberly La Force
excerpt from
A Marriage Proposal
from
The Best American Short Plays 2010–2011
Matt Well, let me start from the beginning. I have been a farmer for years; never too smart but always good with my hands. At first I was a banana farmer in St. Lucia. I had a wife and two young boys and we made good money back then, but the banana industry collapsed when free trade was introduced. [. . .] Imagine if someone had said that during your testimony, imagine how you would feel. It’s okay to listen in church, but then the message goes right out when you leave the church doors. So the demand for our bananas dropped and we were put out of business. Funny thing is that when my money was gone, so was my wife, and I was left with nothing but a field of weeds. I traveled to Texas in 2000 and got small jobs farming there. It was very peaceful, and I harvested for a small canola seed farmer. One day a major company threatened to tell the authorities that my boss was housing illegal immigrants. I was fired and hitchhiked all the way to Florida. [. . .] So I became invisible, always looking over my shoulder and avoiding the law. I no longer wanted to live life in that way, constantly suspicious of others and always on the move, so I started exploring options. I looked for any loopholes in the law. [. . .] I tried it all, the temporary visa program, community colleges, lawyers, army recruitments, and churches. They all told me they could help and took my money but gave no results. I even went under an assumed name and worked under the Social Security number of a dead man. For three years I was known as Michael Jones until I was suspected by authorities. I did so much but to no avail, and now I see that the only option for me is to find a wife and her only qualification is that she is a U.S. citizen. [. . .] I came to you only because after hearing your story, I sensed that you had the maturity to see that marriage is an economic arrangement, not an emotional one. I don’t need love from you and I did not come empty-handed. In Texas, the asking price for marriage is about $15,000. I came to you because your problem is financial, and mine is legal. Together we can help each other.
Douglas Soderberg
excerpt from
The Root of Chaos
from
The Best American Short Plays 1986
scene
The kitchen and dining area of the Cernikowski house in central Pennsylvania.
JOE [Father, forty.] Did it look like a giant woman? [. . .] It’s a family catchphrase. Goes back to your mother’s and my courtship. On our first date, I took her to see this movie called The Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman. It was our first date, see, and we were both a little nervous to begin with. We weren’t terribly involved in the movie. We weren’t scared by it, that is. Well, there came this one part where the mutant title character was, you know, sort of marauding over the countryside. Looking for some mate her own size, I think. You can just imagine why. Anyway, hot on her tail was this sheriff and his goofy deputy sidekick. The infamous tall gal had just terrorized some people parked in a lover’s lane, and the sheriff and his deputy come up and ask this teenaged boy and his chippie in a white convertible, “What happened?” Well, the girl is no help at all. She’s crying and carrying on and saying, “Oh, it was awful, it was awful!” And the sheriff’s asking, “What? What was?” But the girl won’t answer. So then the goofy deputy sidekick pipes in with this line: [Goofy voice.] “Did it look like a giant woman?” [. . .] Your mom and I just about died. Doublemint, you were conceived later that night. And now, whenever something is really obvious, we say that. A family has got to have catchphrases.
Michael Ross Albert
excerpt from
Starfishes
from
The Best American Short Plays 2010–2011
setting
A Nova Scotia lighthouse in the late 1980s. The sitting room.
ELI [Late twenties.] They’re firing lightkeepers all up the coast. It’s easier to make these places automatic. Or just get rid of them. It’s ridiculous. It, it guides lost vessels back to shore. [Beat.] Anyway, I should go upstairs. [. . .] When I was younger, I used to listen to other people’s conversations on the two-way radio. The lighthouse was so far away fr
om anybody that I . . . And one day, I heard this girl over the radio. She must’ve been around my age. Pretty voice. Her name was Margaret, I think. And every Sunday, at the same time, just when I’d be getting home from church, she’d send out the same frequency. [. . .] I started talking to her over the radio upstairs. There was something about her voice. And I think I . . . [. . .] It felt so . . . good. To have someone to talk to. Especially after my father died. Her father was a sailor. She used to tell me about all the exotic things he brought back with him from his voyages. Ships in a bottle from Martinique, uh . . . dried-out sea horses from coral reefs. But the thing she talked about most was this starfish. She said it was perfect. She said that God didn’t make man in his image. He made starfish instead. [. . .] The last time I spoke to her, she was going away for the summer. Her father decided to let her travel with him. And . . . I heard some sailors on the radio talking about it later . . . Their ship was lost at sea. It must have been a foggy night. Somebody probably forgot to light the lamp in the lighthouse. Excuse me.
Shel Silverstein
excerpt from
The Trio
from
The Best American Short Plays 1997–1998
setting
An intimate restaurant. DAVID sits at a restaurant table. [. . .] HELENA sits across from him. Behind them a trio plays—three women in white dresses.
DAVID Let me tell you a story—years ago, there was a cellist—there was a cellist—and there still is—I won’t state his name—You’d know it—you—well—he progressed in the usual fashion—prodigy—Philadelphia—I won’t say which symphony—first chair—and then soloist—He was well received—well respected. And relatively well paid—and relatively happy—for a while—then what? The pressure—the celebrity—it started getting to him—not his ego—not his technique—not his approach—but—something—too much of something—not enough attention—focus—loneliness? In any case, he came to me. It was after a performance of ____________. He came to me—“Maestro,” he said. “Maestro, I am . . . unfit.”—Unfit? He had performed brilliantly—or so it seemed to me—what can an outsider see? Even a conductor—“In tune with the pulse of each musician”—his heartbeat—or hers—