Character: Man

Age: Any

Play: LAUGHING WILD

Author: Christopher Durang (published 1994)

Brief Synopsis: Two comic monologues evolve into a man and a woman’s shared nightmare of modern life and the isolation it creates. From her turf battles at the supermarket to the desperate cliches of self-affirmation he learns at his “per-sonality workshop,” they run the gamut of everyday life’s small brutalizations until they meet, with disastrous inevitability, at the Harmonic Convergence in Central Park.

Speech:

I was in the supermarket the other day about to buy some tuna fish when I sensed this very disturbed presence right behind me. There was something about her focus that made it very clear to me that she was a disturbed person. So I thought – well, you should never look at a crazy person directly, so I thought, I’ll just keep looking at these tuna fish cans, pretending to be engrossed in whether they’re in oil or in water, and the person will then go away. But instead wham! she brings her fist down on my head and screams “would you move, asshole!” (Pause.) Now why did she do that? She hadn’t even said, “would you please move” at some initial point, so I would’ve known what her problem was. Admittedly I don’t always tell people what I want either – like the people in the movie theatres who keep talking, you know, I just give up and resent them -but on the other hand, I don’t take my fist and go wham! on their heads!

I mean, analyzing it, looking at it in a positive light, this woman probably had some really horrible life story that, you know, kind of, explained how she got to this point in time, hitting me in the supermarket. And perhaps if her life – since birth – had been explained to me, I could probably have made some sense out of her action and how she got there. But even with that knowledge – which I didn’t have – it was my head she was hitting, and it’s just so unfair.

It makes me want to never leave my apartment ever ever again. (Suddenly he closes his eyes and moves his arms in a circular motion around himself, round and round, soothingly.) I am the predominant source of energy in my life. I let go of the pain from the past. I let go of the pain from the present. In the places in my body where pain lived previously, now there is light and love and joy. (He opens his eyes again and looks at the audience peacefully and happily.) That was an affirmation

Character: George Gibbs (the boy next door- a kind but irresponsible teenager)

Age: Teenager

Play: OUR TOWN

Author: Thornton Wilder (published 1938)

Brief Synopsis: Our Town is both an affectionate portrait of American life and ‘an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life’. It explores the relationship between two young neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage.

Speech:

I’m celebrating because I’ve got a friend who tells me all the things that ought to be told me. I’m glad you spoke to me like you did. But you’ll see. I’m going to change. And Emily, I want to ask you a favor. Emily, if I go away to State Agricultural College next year, will you write me a letter? The day wouldn’t come when I wouldn’t want to know everything about our town. Y’ know, Emily, whenever I meet a farmer I ask him if he thinks it’s important to go to Agricultural School to be a good farmer. And some of them say it’s even a waste of time. And like you say, being gone all that time –in other places, and meeting other people. I guess new people probably aren’t any better than old ones. Emily, I feel that you’re as good a friend as I’ve got. I don’t need to go and meet the people in other towns. Emily, I’m going to make up my mind right now –I won’t go. I’ll tell Pa about it tonight.

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Character: Chadwick Meade

Age: 17 

Play: PUNK ROCK

Author: Simon Stephens (published 2009)

Brief Synopsis: Based on his experience as a teacher, Stephens describes his play as ‘The History Boys on crack’. It explores the underlying tensions and potential violence in a group of affluent, articulate seventeen year old students. Contemporary and unnerving, the story follows seven sixth-formers as they face up to the pressures of teenage life, while preparing for their mock A-levels and trying to get into Oxbridge. They are a group of educated, intelligent and aspirational young people but step-by-step, the dislocation, disjunction and latent violence simmering under the surface of success is revealed.

Speech:

Human beings are pathetic. Everything human beings do finishes up bad in the end. Everything good human beings ever make is built on something monstrous. Nothing lasts. We certainly won’t. We could have made something really extraordinary and we won’t. We’ve been around one hundred thousand years. We’ll have died out before the next two hundred. 

You know what we’ve got to look forward to? You know what will define the next two hundred years? Religions will become brutalised; crime rates will become hysterical; everybody will become addicted to internet sex; suicidewill become fashionable; there’ll be famine; there’ll be floods; there’ll be fires in the major cities of the Western world. Our education systems will become battered. Our health services unsustainable; our police forces unmanageable; our governments corrupt. There’ll be open brutality in the streets; there’ll be nuclear war; massive depletion of resources on every level; insanely increasing third-world population. It’s happening already. It’s happening now. Thousands die every summer from floods in the Indian monsoon season. Africans from Senegal wash up on the beaches of the Mediterranean and get looked after by guilty holidaymakers. Somalians wait in hostels in Malta or prison islands north of Australia. Hundreds die of heat or fire every year in Paris. Or California. Or Athens. The oceans will rise. The cities will flood. The power stations will flood. Airports will flood. Species will vanish forever. Including ours. So if you think I’m worried by you calling me names, Bennet, you little, little boy, you are fucking kidding yourself.

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Character: Tony

Age: 20s

Play: KISS ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT

Author: Chris Chibnal (published 2001)

Brief Synopsis: 3 A.M. on a hot midsummers night in Manchester. A party taking place in a shabby Victorian terrace house. In the back garden Tony and Ruth meet, thanks to a stolen can of beer. On the floor above, Don and Edie are having a party of their own. As the night progresses, love is definitely in the air but then so is the smell of cheap lager. And even cheaper aftershave.

Speech:

Listen… I need to… Um… Say… I mean… I know we only met earlier… And I nearly set you on fire… And we’re both going out with people. Obviously that’s quite tricky. But… Well… You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on in my entire life. I saw you and my heart leapt. You make me want to change my life. To… participate. I know it’s not possible and that you have a boyfriend and we’re not compatible or whatever but… I just… I know it’s stupid… but maybe just hear me out for a second and then you can tell me I’m an idiot and we’ll both go back in and pretend this never happened but… I want to travel the world with you. I want to bring the ice cold Amstel to your Greek shore. And sit in silence and sip with you. I want to go to Tesco’s with you of a Sunday. Watch you sleep, scrub your back, rub your shoulders, such your toes. I want to write crap poetry about you, lay my coat over puddles for you, always have a handkerchief available for you. I want to get drunk and bore my friends about you, I want them to phone up and moan about how little they see me because I’m spending so much time with you. I want to feel the tingle of our lips meeting, the lock of our eyes joining, the fizz of our fingertips touching. I want to touch your fat tummy and tell you you look gorgeous in maternity dresses, I want to stand next to you wide-eyed and hold my nose as we open that first used nappy, I want to watch you grow old and love you more and more each day. I want to fall in love with you. I think I could. And I think it would be good. And I want you to say yes. You might feel the same. 

Beat. 

Could you? Maybe? 

RUTH looks at Tony
She goes to say something
Snap blackout

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Character: Chunk

Age: 20s

Play: THE CALL

Author: Patricia Cornelius (published 2009)

Brief Synopsis:  The Call is an enthralling drama about a young man looking to escape a suburban life

Speech:

You’ve got it all wrong. It come to me like a whack on the back of the head, like the floor’s suddenly given way. An epiphany, that’s what I’m having. Ever heard of an epiphany, Aldo? It’s like God’s spoken, like lightning, some fucking big moment of enlightenment. And I’m having it. It’s all crap. It’s a big load of bull. A hoax. Someone major’s pulling our leg, got us by the throat and is throttling us, got us boxed in, packed up. Nothing—means—nothing. You got it? Once you got that, you’re living free. Who says how life’s meant to be? Who says what’s good, what you should or shouldn’t do? Who in hell’s got the right to measure a man’s success? He did this, he did that, he got that job, he got paid a lot. Fuck off. He owns a house, a wife, two kids. So what? He’s a lawyer, a doctor, he’s made a success of his life. No success story for the likes of us. 

And you know what? I don’t give a shit. Finally it’s clear to me. It’s all crap. And I’m free of it at last.

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Character: Ben (older brother of Shane- the protagonist)

Age: 20s

Play: STRANGERS IN BETWEEN

Author: Tommy Murphy (premiered 2005)

Brief Synopsis:  There’s a climate of fear in friendly Goulbourn and Shane is forced from his family, and flees to Kings Cross, Sydney. Shane is unsure of his sexuality, more unsure of how to find intimacy and completely thrown by having to choose between laundry liquid and powder. He meets 2 strangers, Will and the beguiling Peter, a 50-year-old gay man.

Speech:

I’ve tried. But it won’t work. Come back. Mum’s waiting for you to come back. You should see her hair but. She came home from the hairdresser and it was so big and curly. It was like she’d gone in and asked to look like Barnsie in Chisel. Fuck, Dad and me laughed. Couldn’t help it. I was ripped so I couldn’t stop. Mum cried and I got paranoid but then she laughed and it was okay. We don’t laugh much no more. She can’t sleep. She has nightmares. Tim Hewson looks like he will get a contract with Maserati. The paper was right for once. After his dad’s funeral he was straight on a plane to Europe. They’ll pay him heaps. His dad was watching car racing when he died. People die all the time in Goulburn. That’s all old people talk about, hey. A pipe bust open on me the other day. Shit poured on me and everything. Everyone laughed. I didn’t snap. I’m not going to get into fights no more. There’s heaps of Lebs in Goulburn. They’re moving there from Sydney. It’s dangerous. They fight in packs. If one gets you on the ground, ten cousins’ll jump out of Holdens and kick the shit out of you. They live in hills and prowl at night. A baby got taken from the hospital. It was hot as all fuck on the road. Was worried my new tyres would melt. Nan might not move down the coast no more. There are Lebs there too. And junkies. Junkie Lebs. Terrorist junkie Lebs everywhere and the drought. Council’s got to do something. More roundabouts. Ivan Milat’s running for alderman but. Shooters Party and a Family First preference deal, they reckon. It’s such a hot day. Come back. We’d drive straight to the pool. Straight down the highway. Straight through town. Straight to the pool. Dive in and swim to the other side.

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Character: Ruben Guthrie

Age: 29 (This speech could be played by any age)

Play: RUBEN GUTHRIE

Author: Brendan Cowell (published 2009)

Brief Synopsis: Ruben Guthrie is on fire. He’s the Creative Director of a cutting-edge advertising agency, he’s engaged to a Czech supermodel and Sydney is his oyster. He pours himself a drink to celebrate, a drink to work, a drink to sleep and one spectacular night he drinks so much he thinks he can fly.

Speech:

School school school school school. Fuck, um – well my parents sent me to a boarding school. I mean how hard is it to have one kid asleep at night in your house how hard is it but no . . . boarding school! Look, I gotta say I wasn’t like ―this at boarding school, I didn’t like getting smashed on rocket fuel and talking about vaginas, honestly I had no interest in Alcohol at all. I spent my money on magazines and electronics – fashion mostly. By the time I reached Year Eight I had fifteen pairs of jeans. So of course the rugby guys and the rowing guys and the wrestling guys would come in at night and they’d pin me down and get it out of their system – the rage. ―Nice shoes faggot – you got mousse in your hair let’s put mousse in his anus! I’d be flipping through MAD magazine and just put the thing down and take it. Fine. But then this guy called Corey joined our school, and suddenly all that stopped. Corey was older than me, bigger than me and a whole lot cooler than me. He drove a black Suzuki Vitara had five earrings and the word ‘Fuck’ tattooed inside his lip. My mum was always saying ―bring Corey with you on the weekend and she’d go all flushed and wear low-cut tops in the kitchen. To this day I don’t know why he chose me but he did.

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Character: Douglas

Age: 20s-30s

Play: EUROPE

Author: Michael Gow

Brief Synopsis: In Europe a young Australian travels in pursuit of an actress with whom he has had a brief affair

Speech:

What a great place. This area’s like something out of Thomas Mann or Kafka. God it’s exciting being in Europe. So alive, isn’t it? So… pulsating. I’ve had a great morning. I saw your Roman mosaic. Went on a tour of that poet’s house. Had a look at the inn where what’s-his-name wrote his opera. And I went to this great exhibition at the big gallery. There’s some amazing things in there. Stuff I knew quite well. And that altar they’ve got! But there was this performance art thing. Incredible! There was this big pool full of fish, carp, I don’t know, and this guy, nothing on, you were right, with all these crucifixes and beads in his hair, wading through the water, dragging this little raft behind him; he had the rope in his teeth. On the raft was this pile of animal innards with candles sticking out of it. Then these other people dressed as astronauts and red Indians ran round and round the pond screaming and then they lit this fire and threw copies of the Mona Lisa into it. And then, I don’t know how they did it but the water turned bright red. Just incredible. You must see it. It’s great being here. Everything’s so exciting. I’ve been keeping everything I get. Every little item, every bus ticket, gallery ticket, the train tickets. Every postcard. Every coaster from every bar, every café.

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Character: James

Age: 20s-30s

Play: SECRET BRIDESMAIDS BUSINESS

Author:  Elizabeth Coleman (Published 1999)

Brief Synopsis:  It’s the night before Meg’s wedding. She and her bridesmaids are planning to kick up their heels as the final hours before the big day tick down. However not everything goes to plan as a last minute scandal threatens to ruin the whole affair. 

Speech:

Look, sex and love are separate things…Well, they can be, that’s all I’m saying. This thing with Naomiokay, it should never have happened-but it didn’t have to impact on what I have with Meg. I thought that was the deal. It was a separate arrangement. She told me she just wanted a bit of fun, and now she turns around and does this…! I mean, where the hell did that come from? If I’d known Naomi felt like that I would’ve broken it off with her months ago. Well maybe. Oh shit, maybe not. But I just-I just wish women would say what they mean. You know-plainly, clearly state what they want instead of expecting you to be psychic. Meg bought me this T-shirt at the Warner Brothers store, and it’s got a picture of Superman on it. He’s wearing this perplexed expression and he’s saying You want me to leap tall buildings and be sensitive and supportive?! That’s how it is with women. They want you to slay a dragon for them one second, then cry at a guide dog commercial the next. 

And somehow you’re expected to guess when they want you to be controlling and when they want you to be crying-and if you don’t make the right guess at the right time it’s instantly construed as proof that you don’t love them enough. If you really loved me you wouldn’t need to ask. How many times have I heard that? Well I’m sorry, I’ve loved a few people a lot, but no-one’s ever stepped out of the shadows and handed me a crystal ball. Anyway,I know I’m trying to change the subject. The fact is, I’ve been acting like a prick.

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Character: Valentine (a present-day graduate student of mathematics)

Age: 20s-30s

Play: ARCADIA

Author: Tom Stoppard (Published 1993)

Brief Synopsis:  Scenes from the past and present play themselves out in the same room of an English estate. Although separated by nearly 200 years, characters and time begin to overlap. Discussions of the second law of thermodynamics, poetry, and carnal embrace lead to moments that can never be undone, no matter what we wish.. 

Speech:

If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each time there’d be a dot somewhere on the screen. You’d never know where to expect the next dot. But gradually you’d start to see this shape, because every dot will be a mathematical object. But yes. The unpredictable and the predictable unfold together to make everything the way it is. it’s how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. it makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sizes stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about – clouds – daffodils – waterfalls- and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in – these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We’re better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it’ll rain on auntie’s garden party three Sundays from now. Because the problem turns out to be different. We can’t even predict the net drip from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable the same way, will always be unpredictable. When you push the numbers through the computer you can see it on the screen. The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

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Character: Francis

Age: 20s-30s

Play: THE GOLDEN AGE 

Author: Louis Nowra (published 1985)

Brief Synopsis: Inspired by the true story of a group of people who were discovered in the wilds of Tasmania in 1939. Lost in time and steeped in its own history and traditions, this curious community is a complete mystery and a disturbing challenge to its modern counterpart.

Speech:

Are you looking at the sunset? (Startled BETSHEB turns around. Smiling) I’m not a monster… No more running. Look at us reflected in the water, see? Upside-down. (He smiles and she smiles back. Silence) So quiet. I’m not used to such silence. I’m a city boy, born and bred. You’ve never seen a city or town, have you? Where I live there are dozens of factories: shoe factories, some that make gaskets, hydraulic machines, clothing. My mother works in a shoe factory. (Pointing to his boots) These came from my mother’s factory. 

(Silence) 

These sunsets here, I’ve never seen the likes of them. A bit of muddy orange light in the distance, behind the chimneys, is generally all I get to see. (Pause) You’d like the trams, especially at night. They rattle and squeak, like ghosts rattling their chains, and every so often the conducting rod hits a terminus, and there is a brilliant spark of electricity, like an axe striking a rock. ‘Spiss!’ On Saturday afternoon thousands of people go and watch the football. A huge oval of grass. (Miming a football) A ball like this. Someone hand passes it, ‘Whish’, straight to me. I duck one lumbering giant, spin around a nifty dwarf of a rover, then I catch sight of the goals. I boot a seventy-yard drop kick straight through the centre. The crowd goes wild! 

(He cheers wildly. BETSHEB laughs at his actions. He is pleased to have made her laugh.) Not as good as your play. (Pause.) 

This is your home. My home is across the river, Bass Strait.

(Silence) What is it about you people? Why are you like you are? Don’t go. 

I was watching you pick these. My mother steals flowers from her neighbour’s front garden so every morning she can have fresh flowers in her vase for Saint Teresa’s portrait. She was a woman centuries ago. God fired a burning arrow of love into her. (Smiling) When it penetrated her, Saint Teresa could smell the burning flesh of her heart.

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Character: Carter (Tom’s closest friend at the office)

Age: late 20s-30s

Play: FAT PIG

Author: Neil LaBute (premiered 2004)

Brief Synopsis: “Cow.” “Slob.” “Pig.” How many insults can you hear before you have to stand up and defend the woman you love? Tom faces just that question when he falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman who happens to be plus-sized and then some. Forced to explain his new relationship to his shallow (although shockingly funny) friends, Tom comes to terms with his own preconceptions of the importance of conventional good looks.

Speech:

Dude, I understand. Like, totally. (Beat) I used to walk ahead of her in the mall or, you know, not tell her stuff at school so there wouldn’t be, whatever. My own mom. I mean … I’m fifteen and worried about every little thing, and I’ve got this f— sumo wrestler in a housecoat trailing behind me. That’s about as bad as it can get! I’m not kidding you. And the thing was, I blamed her for it. I mean, it wasn’t like a disease or like some people have, thyroid or that type of deal … she just shoveled shit into her mouth all the time, had a few kids, and, bang, she’s up there at 350, maybe more. It used to seriously piss me off. My dad was always working late … golfing on weekends, and I knew it was because of her. It had to be! How’s he gonna love something that looks like that, get all sexy with her? I’m just a kid at the time, but I can remember thinking that.

Yeah, it’s whatever, but … this once, in the grocery store, we’re at Albertsons and we’re pushing four baskets around – you wanna know how humiliating that s— is? – and I’m supposed to be at a game by seven, I’m on JV, and she’s just farting around in the candy isle, picking up bags of “fun size” Snickers and checking out the calories. Yeah. I mean, what is that?! So, I suddenly go off on her, like, this sophomore in high school, but I’m all screaming in her face … “Don’t look at the package, take a look in the mirror, you cow! PUT ‘EM DOWN!” Holy s—, there’s stock boys – bunch of guys I know, even – are running down the isle. Manager stumbling out of his glass booth there, the works. (Beat) But you know what? She doesn’t say a word about it. Ever. Not about the swearing, the things I called her, nothing. Just this, like, one tear I see … as we’re sitting at a stoplight on the way home. That’s all.

I did feel that way, though. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve yelled or . . . but it was true, what I said. You don’t like being fat, there’s a pretty easy remedy, most times. Do-not-jam-so-much-food-in-your-f— gullet. (Beat) It’s not that hard.

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Character: Tim (Irish)

Age: early 30s

Play: THE GOOD FATHER

Author: Stewart Parker Trust Award-winning play by Christian O’Reilly (premiered 2002)

Brief Synopsis: It’s New Year’s Eve and most of the party guests are in the kitchen admiring photos of their babies. But two lonely strangers find themselves cut off from the rest. Jane was invited because she knows the people in the kitchen. Tim was invited because he painted the kitchen. Jane drunkenly asks Tim, “What are you doing for sex tonight?” And a few weeks later she calls him with some unexpected news: she’s pregnant… This speech takes place near the start of the play.

Speech:

 So I decided to go to the doctor. And I don’t know about you, but I hate doctors. Terrify me. ‘Course it was a woman doctor. I nearly ran out of the place. But then I was thinkin’, well what would I like better – have a woman or a man feeling me…? So that made it easier. Even so, it was, you know, embarrassin’ – and the mad thing is the room was upstairs with the curtains open and didn’t the 19A fly past – and the whole top deck nearly broke their necks for a gander. She closed the curtains after that. So I start tellin’ her about my mole and cancer and all this and she starts feelin’ me – like she had plastic gloves on and I was lyin’ on this bed, like a baby almost –

That’s the thing. She looks at me and says, ‘Are you aware that you only have one testicle?’ Well, I nearly dropped, or I would have only she was holding me by the – and obviously one of them hadn’t dropped, or somethin’. ‘You’re jokin’?’ I says. She says, ‘Surely you must have noticed?’ But that was the thing. I always just assumed I had two. Like I never bothered countin’ them. I thought, I dunno, I thought maybe they were so close together they felt like one, or maybe when one was down there, the other was off doing somethin’ else – like I dunno, I just never thought about it. So she tells me then that I might have what they call an ‘undescended testes’, meanin’ that one dropped, but the other didn’t…she said I’d have to get it checked out, cos if there was one still up there it would have to be removed because, guess what – it could become cancerous. So she gives me this letter to bring to a urologist at the hospital. I make an appointment, six weeks later in I go.

He tells me there’s a one in four chance I’m not fertile, that I can’t be a father, like. I says. ‘Like is there a way of findin’ out whether I’m fertile or not?’ So he tells me there’s a sperm analysis test that I can do if I really want to. Anyway, I go off and a couple of weeks later I go back for the ultrasound. An’ I’m delighted, like, that I don’t have cancer – cancer of the missin’ ball, an’ I’m thinkin’ I’ve a great story for the lads if ever I had the nerve to tell them, but all I’m thinkin’ is, Am I fertile or not’? Can I be a dad or not?

Like I didn’t know until that moment just how much I wanted to be a father. It’s stupid, but like I’d started imaginin’ it, what I’d be like, walkin’ around with a little fella holdin’ me hand, teachin’ him how to cross the road, or a little girl and holdin’ her up in the air – the way they look down at you, they’re so amazed to be up high. And bein’ a good father like – encouragin’ your kids, givin’ them a tenner if they’re stuck, askin’ them how they are, always knowin’ if somethin’ was up, bein’ there for them, bein’ there for them always, always… givin’ your life for them, givin’ your life to them – fuckin’ hell, that’s the kind of person you want to be somebody, more of those kind of people, the kind of person I want to be. Father I wanted to be.

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Character: Lenny

Age: early 30s

Play: THE HOMECOMING

Author: Multi-Award winning playwright Harold Pinter (premiered 1965)

Brief Synopsis: When Teddy, a professor in an American university, brings his wife Ruth to visit his old home in London, he finds his family still living in the house. In the conflict that follows, it is Ruth who becomes the focus of the family’s struggle for supremacy.

Speech:

I mean, I am very sensitive to atmosphere, but I tend to get desensitized, if you know what I mean, when people make unreasonable demands on me. For instance, last Christmas I decided to do a bit of snow-clearing for the Borough Council, because we had a heavy snow over here that year in Europe. Well, that morning, while I was having my mid-morning cup of tea in a neighbouring cafe, the shovel standing by my chair, an old lady approached me and asked me if I would give her a hand with her iron mangle. Her brother-in-law, she said, had left it for her, but he’d left it in the wrong room, he’d left it in the front room. Well, naturally, she wanted it in the back room. It was a present he’d given her, you see, a mangle, to iron out the washing. But he’d left it in the wrong room, he’d left it in the front room, well that was a silly place to leave it, it couldn’t stay there. So I took time off to give her a hand. She only lived up the road. Well, the only trouble was when I got there I couldn’t move this mangle. It must have weighed about half a ton. How this brother-in-law got it up there in the first place I can’t even begin to envisage. So there I was, doing a bit of shoulders on with the mangle, risking a rupture, and this old lady just standing there, waving me on, not even lifting a little finger to give me a helping hand. So after a few minutes I said to her, now look here, why don’t you stuff this iron mangle up your arse? Anyway, I said, they’re out of date, you want to get a spin drier. I had a good mind to give her a workover there and then, but as I was feeling jubilant with the snow-clearing I just gave her a short-arm jab to the belly and jumped on a bus outside. Excuse me, shall I take this ashtray out of your way?

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Character: Lenny

Age: early 30s

Play: THE HOMECOMING

Author: Multi-Award winning playwright Harold Pinter (premiered 1965)

Brief Synopsis: When Teddy, a professor in an American university, brings his wife Ruth to visit his old home in London, he finds his family still living in the house. In the conflict that follows, it is Ruth who becomes the focus of the family’s struggle for supremacy.

Speech:

I mean, I am very sensitive to atmosphere, but I tend to get desensitized, if you know what I mean, when people make unreasonable demands on me. For instance, last Christmas I decided to do a bit of snow-clearing for the Borough Council, because we had a heavy snow over here that year in Europe. Well, that morning, while I was having my mid-morning cup of tea in a neighbouring cafe, the shovel standing by my chair, an old lady approached me and asked me if I would give her a hand with her iron mangle. Her brother-in-law, she said, had left it for her, but he’d left it in the wrong room, he’d left it in the front room. Well, naturally, she wanted it in the back room. It was a present he’d given her, you see, a mangle, to iron out the washing. But he’d left it in the wrong room, he’d left it in the front room, well that was a silly place to leave it, it couldn’t stay there. So I took time off to give her a hand. She only lived up the road. Well, the only trouble was when I got there I couldn’t move this mangle. It must have weighed about half a ton. How this brother-in-law got it up there in the first place I can’t even begin to envisage. So there I was, doing a bit of shoulders on with the mangle, risking a rupture, and this old lady just standing there, waving me on, not even lifting a little finger to give me a helping hand. So after a few minutes I said to her, now look here, why don’t you stuff this iron mangle up your arse? Anyway, I said, they’re out of date, you want to get a spin drier. I had a good mind to give her a workover there and then, but as I was feeling jubilant with the snow-clearing I just gave her a short-arm jab to the belly and jumped on a bus outside. Excuse me, shall I take this ashtray out of your way?

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Character: Wesley

Age: Teenage

Play: CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS

Author: Sam Shepard (First performed 1977)

Brief Synopsis: The play focuses on the disturbed Tate family—the drunken father, burned-out mother, rebellious teenage daughter, and idealistic son—as they struggle for control of the rundown family farm in a futile search for freedom, security, and ultimately meaning in their lives. 

Speech:

I was lying there on my back. I could smell the avocado blossoms. I could hear the coyotes. I could hear stock cars squealing down the street. I could feel myself in my bed in my room in this house in this town in this state in this country. I could feel this country close like it was part of my bones. I could feel the presence of people outside, at night, in the dark. Even sleeping people I could feel. Even all the sleeping animals. Dogs. Peacocks. Bulls. Even tractors sitting in their wetness, waiting for the sun to come up. I was looking straight up at the ceiling at all my model airplanes hanging by all their thin metal wires. Floating. Swaying very quietly like they were being blown by someone’s breath. Cobwebs moving with them. Dust laying on their wings. Decals peeling off their wings. My P-39. My Messerschmitt. My Jap Zero. 

I could feel myself lying far below them on my bed like I was on the ocean and overhead they were on reconnaissance. Scouting me. Floating. Taking pictures of the enemy. Me, the enemy. I could feel the space around me like a big, black world. I listened like an animal. My listening was afraid. Afraid of sound. Tense. Like any second something could invade me. Some foreigner. Something undescribable. Then I heard the Packard coming up the hill. From a mile off I could tell it was the Packard by the sound of the valves. The lifters have a sound like nothing else. Then I could picture my Dad driving it. Shifting unconsciously. Downshifting into second for the last pull up the hill. I could feel the headlights closing in. Cutting through the orchard. I could see the trees being lit one after the other by the lights, then going back to black. My heart was pounding. Just from Dad coming back.

Character: Young Man

Age: Teenage

Play: I’VE COME ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION

Author: Tony Morphett (published 1966)

Brief Synopsis: A modernist play formed of 6 one act plays.

Speech:

Violent? Violent, are we? Tell me what else we’ve ever been shown, Dad. Eh Dad? Eh? What else have we ever seen, eh? Teenager ordered the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, eh Dad? Bit of a kid worked out the answer to the Jewish problem, eh Dad? All you kids. All so violent. You were a violent kid, Dad, weren’t you? Fighting in the revolution. Cutting people’s throats an all. Who was it told you to cut the throats, Dad? Teenager was it? 

Or was it some old bastard with a grey moustache and one foot in the grave? Eh, Dad? Eh? Who nutted out the area bombing in Germany? Who worked out the flying bombs for England? Who said for every one bomb that drops on our kids, we’ll drop ten on theirs? Rotten pimply-faced teenage hooligans, wasn’t it? Eh, Dad? You know why you say we’re violent? Because some of us have taken a wake-up to you. I wouldn’t swat a fly for you or anyone else your age. But if I needed to, for myself, I’d cut God’s throat. I’m not killing for old men in parliaments. I’m killing for myself. And do you know why, Dad? Because all along, right down the line from the man with the club killing on the witchdoctor’s say-so, right through to the poor helpless bastards spitted on bayonets in what a warm, fat bishop could call a just war, right down the line, there’s always been another generation of kids to send off to get killed. But this is it. Since that bomb. If we muff it, it …. is … this … generation … that… picks … up … the …cheque. So that’s why I’m not listening to anyone but me. 

And for all sorts of confused reasons, I am going to kill that man in the car.

Character: Tom

Age: Teenage

Play: AWAY

Author: Michael Gow (first performed 1986)

Brief Synopsis: Away opens with a school performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Included in the school cast is Tom and Meg who form a friendship and slight attraction to each other. It’s Christmas in 1967 and time to re-enact the rituals of the summer holiday. Three Australian families set out separately but are driven together by a storm. At times funny and yet painfully truthful, Away explores the comedy and tragedy of their lives

Speech:

Yeah, that’s what I had. An infection. Everyone knew I had some infection. I was sick. I was told the infection was running its course. That I had to fight. I did. One day a doctor came and sat on my bed and had a long talk with me. He told me that before I got completely well again I would get a lot worse, get really, really sick. And no matter how sick I got not to worry because it meant that soon I’d start to get well again. He was full of shit. He couldn’t look me in the face to say it. He stared at the cabinet next to the bed the whole time. And the nurses were really happy whenever they were near me, but when I stared them in the face, in the end they’d look away and bite their lips. When I was able to go home the doctor took me into his office and we had another talk. I had to look after myself. No strain, no dangerous activity. Keep my spirits up. Then he went very quiet, leant over the desk, practically whispering how if I knew a girl it’d be good for me to do it, to try it. ‘It’, he kept calling it. It, it. I put him on the spot. What? Name it. Give it a name.

Character: Tim ( a teenage playwright)

Age: Teens

Play: ONLY HEAVEN KNOWS 

Author: Alex Harding (published 1997)

Brief Synopsis: An ebullient and allegorical musical set in the 1940s and 1950s, telling the story of one young man’s discovery of love and affection in the big city. 

Speech:

It’s not their fault – they didn’t ask for me – I didn’t ask for them – I felt – I felt I had no right to be there, not any more. Peter went off to the war, and at first things seemed easier, but then Aunty Maureen got a telegram – Peter was on his way home, he’d trodden on a land mine and lost both legs. From that day on I felt I was a constant reminder of their son, but it was me running around on two legs, not him. Aunty Maureen was alright, we’d talk. We’d listen to the wireless. I loved the plays best – I’d like to do that one day – write plays. Could I listen to your wireless sometimes Guinea? I miss it. Do you think that I could get a job in the theatre – or on the wireless? (Beat) I’d go with Aunty Maureen to the army hospital to see Peter. I hated it. Other blokes there – the same age as me – half dead, screaming. Peter would be crying all the time – he wouldn’t say anything. Everywhere was pain and I was terrified – that they’d make me stay there, that I would never get out – I felt guilty because I wasn’t in those beds, I was free – I was – free. And my uncle would look at me and behind his eyes would be the word ‘coward’ ….. I’ll never go back, never.

Character: Ricko

Age: Late teens

Play: BLACKROCK

Author: Nick Enright (First performed 1995)

Brief Synopsis: Based on the murder of Leigh Leigh in Stockton, Australia. It’s Toby Ackland’s birthday party down near the surf club—and that should mean heaps of grog, drugs and good clean fun. But by the morning a young girl is dead—raped by three boys and bashed with a rock.

Speech:

You back me up, I’ll back you up. Then whatever happened we’re not in it. I know you didn’t kill her! I did. I fucken killed her (A BEAT) Shana come on to me, then she backed off. Spider says it’s a full moon, heaps of other chicks down the beach, take anyone on. I knew which ones were up for it, mate. We both did. We checked them out together. And they were checking us out, weren’t they? You and me and every other prick. The whole fucken netball squad. So, I get out there. Wazza’s getting head from some bush-pig up against the dunny wall. One of them young babes, Leanne? I don’t know, comes running up to me, calls my name, Ricko, hey, Ricko! She grabs me, pashes me off. She’s on, no, she’s fucken not, she’s with some fucken grommet, he takes her off down the south end. I head towards the rock. I hear my name again. 

Ricko. Ricko. It’s Tracy. Tracy Warner. I go, right, Jared was here. It’s cool. I’ll take his seconds. She’s on her hands and knees. Says will I help her. She’s lost an earring, belongs to Cherie, she has to give it back. There’s something shiny hanging off the back of her T-shirt. I grab it, I say, here it is. She can’t see it. I give it to her. I say what are you going to give me? She says she’s going home, she’s hurting. I say hurting from what? Guys, she says, those guys. Take me home, Ricko. Tells me I’m a legend, says she feels okay with me. Look after me, Ricko. Take me home. Puts her arms around me. I put mine round her. I feel okay now, Ricko. She feels more than okay. I say I’ll take you home, babe, but first things first. I lay her down on the sand, but she pushes me off. Oh, she likes it rough. I give it to her rough. Then she fucken bites me, kicks me in the nuts. My hand comes down on a rock…A rock in one hand and her earring in the other. (Silence) It was like it just happened. The cops wouldn’t buy that, but. Would they? Now if I was with you…Will you back me up mate? You got to. You got to. Please. Please, Jazza.