Instructions

Matt
1. Be told success comes from good grades
2. Be told practice makes perfect
Grace: I don’t understand
Matt: Correct
3. Learn practice makes permanent
4. Compare yourself to others
Isabella: Do you know what he’s talking about?
Matt: Exactly right.
5. Be forced to make choices
6. Be treated like a child while expected to be acting like an adult
7. Learn failure comes in many forms
Kate: What does that mean?
Matt: Now you’re getting it.
8. Understand that life is unfair

Repetition
Kate
My mother taught me this trick: If you repeat something over and over again it loses its meaning.
For example: Homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework,
homework. See, nothing.
Our existence, she said, is the same way. You watch the sun set too often, it just becomes 6 PM.
You make the same mistake over and over; you’ll stop calling it a mistake.
If you just: wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, one day you’ll forget why.
Nothing is forever, she said. My parents left each other when I was 7 years old.
I imagined that it was an accident. That when I left, they whispered to each other “I love you” so
many times over that they forgot what it meant. Family, family, family, family, family, family.
My mother taught me this trick. If you repeat something over and over again it loses its meaning.
This became my favorite game. It made the sting of words evaporate. Separation, separation,
separation; see, nothing.
Soon after my parents’ divorce, I developed a stutter. There is no escape in stutter. You feel the
meaning of every word drag itself up your throat. Stutter is a cage made of mirrors.It is a glaring
reflection you cannot escape. Over and over until it just hangs there.
Mom, Dad, I am not wasteful with my words anymore. Even now after hundreds of hours of
practicing away my stutter, I still feel the claw of meaning in the bottom of my throat.
I have heard that even in space; You can hear the scratching of an “I-I-I-I love you.”

Liam’s Poem
Isabella
I don't know what is going on. I could ask my teacher, dad, or mom. But you're growing up! is
what they say. So I roll along for another day and so we beat on.

 Guidance Office (Matt)

Matt/Kate
Kate: Waaaaaa waaaa
Matt: I don’t know.
Kate: Waaaaaa waaaa
Matt: My favorite subject? Probably biology.
Kate: Waaaaaa waaaa
Matt: A Marine biologist? Good Greif…

Timer Monologue
Matt/Grace
Improvised
The Paradox
Grace
When I am inside writing,
all I can think about is how I should be outside living.
When I am outside living,
all I can do is notice all there is to write about.
When I read about love, I think I should be out loving.
When I love, I think I need to read more.

I am stumbling in pursuit of grace,

I hunt patience with a vengeance.

On the mornings when my brother’s tired muscles

held to the pillow, my father used to tell him,
For every moment you aren’t playing basketball,
someone else is on the court practicing.

I spend most of my time wondering

if I should be somewhere else.
So I have learned to shape the words thank you
with my first breath each morning, my last breath every night.

When the last breath comes, at least I will know I was thankful
for all the places I was so sure I was not supposed to be.
All those places I made it to,
all the loves I held, all the words I wrote.

And even if it is just for one moment,

I will be exactly where I am supposed to be.















































 Guidance Office (Isabella)
Isabella/Kate
Kate: Waaaaaa waaaa
Isabella: Where am I at? I don’t know.
Kate: Waaaaaa waaaa
Isabella: My favorite subject is math.
Kate: Waaaaaa waaaa
Isabella: I don't want to be an accountant. I can't stand it, I just can't stand it.

Dear College
Isabella
Dear College,
This pre-constructed idea of what we all have to do and be and look like on paper is tearing us all
apart. I hear people so worried about impressing their parents, worried about impressing family
members, worried about impressing you. But I don't really hear people talking about how they
are worried about impressing themselves. This uncertainty of whether or not we are going to get
in, whether or not we will succeed at your school, whether or not we will fit in, or even whether
or not we will like the school is daunting. I think we are all most uncertain about what we will do
after you chew us up and spit us out to be graduates of your school. We are all worried about
failing or not being good enough while we are at your school as well. Just because we got in and
got over that uncertain battle of looking good on paper to you, there is this uncertainty of
succeeding. Why do you do this to us? See you soon.
From, Your Potential Student.
————Tableaux————
Guidance Office (Grace)
Grace/Kate
Kate: Waaaaaa waaaa
Grace: Well I’ve always wanted to be an actress.
Kate: Let’s be realistic here. What’s your favorite subject?
Grace: (Freeze)
Kate: You know I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but my favorite subject was psychology.
I wanted to go to the moon but somehow I landed on Mars.

Nursery Rhyme
Kate
I see the moon, the moon sees me. The moon sees somebody that I don’t see
God bless the moon and God bless me. And god bless the somebody that i don't see
If I get heaven before you do, I’ll make a hole and pull you through.
And I’ll write your name on every star. And that way the world won’t seem so far