Lost in Yonkers * (one of my favorite plays on this planet)

Bella is a little challenged. Though it is never specified what conditions she may
have, her history with the Home and her frantic and anxious behavior lead many to
believe she has serious anxiety, bipolar depression, and may be on the spectrum.
This is the show’s biggest, best monologue (beyond the one that Jay does that I did
for auditions and previews cause it’s good as hell). Here, she is yelling at her
mother about how she is strong and capable and healthy enough to have kids one
day with a man who also has a history with the Home. This is such a raw moment,
and, if you choose this one, come to me so I can really dive into this piece. I’ve
directed this scene before so I can help
BELLA. You think I can’t have healthy babies, Momma? Well, I can…I’m as
strong as an ox. I’ve worked in that store and taken care of you by myself since
I’m twelve years old, that’s how strong I am…Like steel, Momma. Isn’t that how
we’re supposed to be? … But my babies won’t die because I’ll love them and take
care of them … And they won’t get sick like me or Gert or be weak like Eddie and
Louie … My babies will be happier than we were because I’ll teach them to be
happy … Not to grow up and run away or never visit when they’re older or not be
able to breathe because they’re so frightened … and never, ever to make them
spend their lives rubbing my back and my legs because you never had anyone
around who loved you enough to want to youch you because you made it so clear
you never wanted to be touched with love … Do you know what it’s like to touch
steel, Momma? It’s hard and it’s cold and I want to be warm and soft with my
children … Let me have my babies, Momma. Because I have to love somebody. I
have to love someone who’ll love me back before I die … Give me that, Momma,
and I promise you, you’ll never worry about being alone … Because you’ll have us
… Me and my husband and my babies … Louie, tell her how wonderful that would
be … Gert, wouldn’t that make her happy? … Momma? … Please say yes … I
need you to say yes … please? (Grandma gets up slowly and leaves in silence.)
Hold me … Somebody please hold me.

The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? *

Basically, this show is a contemporary shot at a Greek tragedy. It follows a family
where the patriarch, Martin, reveals that he is having a sexual relationship with a
goat named Sylvia. Stevie, his wife, in this monologue, is confronting him about
how she can barely keep her head straight with everything running about in it, and
that everything she has just found out seems too crazy to be true.
STEVIE. Now, you listen to me. I have listened to you. I have heard you tell me
how much you love me, how you’ve never even wanted another woman, how we
have been a more perfect marriage than chance would even allow. We’re both too
bright for most of the shit. We see the deep and awful humor of things go over the
heads of most people; we see what’s hideously wrong in what most people accept
as normal; we have both the joys and the sorrows of all that. We have a straight
line through life, right all the way to dying, but that’s OK because it’s a good
line…so long as we don’t screw up. Do you know how you’ve done it? How
you’ve screwed up? Because you’ve broken something and it can’t be fixed! Fall
out of love with me? Fine! No, not fine, but that can be fixed…time…whatever!
But tell me you love me and an animal – both of us! – equally? The same way?
That you go from my bed – our bed…(Aside-ish.) it’s amazing, you know, how
good we are, still, how we please each other and ourselves so…fully, so…fresh
each time… (Aside over.) … you go from our bed, wash your dick, get in your car
and go to her, and do with her what I cannot imagine myself imagining? Or –
worse! …that you’ve come from her, to my bed?! To our bed?! …and you do with
me what I can imagine…love…want you for?!

Sea Marks*
This play is so beautiful and demanding. It tells the story of two folks living on two
separate islands who met one day and decided to grow a relationship through
writing letters to one another until they meet again in real life. Here, Timothea is
telling Colm how she is shocked that words led to love, and how much they mean
to her now.
TIMOTHEA. Words is everything to us! It’s all I had of you for a year-and-a-half,
two winters and a summer of not knowing who it was behind the words, but
knowing that a feeling in me was something I’d never known in my life.
Wondering what it was – and how could it be love, if it was only words? There’s
no such thing – I thought. I didn’t know what was there in the words that made me
turn around and go to Maggie’s wedding at the Heads. But when I saw you out
back of the church, I knew. You’re the boy. All of him you. And that was it.
There’s nothing that’s come of my life here – my marriage – none of it – that’s
meant so much. And it was all in your words and it was all true.
Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead* (I can get it over
Thanksgiving break…didn’t bring it here!)
This monologue is the “same character” as Sally in the cartoons. This monologue
is her performance piece. Throughout the play she talks about a play she has
written called Cocooning into a Platypus in which she describes being a caterpillar
that wants to become a platypus instead of a butterfly.
CB’S SISTER. (A bad performance)
Metamorphosis. Transformation. Evolution. Change. Evolution. Change. Changing
evolution. I am a teenage caterpillar. I know of these things. For soon, I’ll spin a
cocoon. And from the silk-like craft that I will create, a magnificent creature will
emerge. No. Not a butterfly. For butterflies are a dime a dozen. Destined to flit
about for a day or so, then drop dead. Or have its rings ripped off by a demented
child. Or have its body pinned to a piece of cheap foam core and matted
underneath a cheap frame and hung in the bathroom of an elderly woman who
reeks of Preparation-H and Vicks VapoRub. (Beat) This will not be my fate,. This
CANNOT be my fate. I will become a platypus. It’s not impossible. It’s just never
been done before. It’s only a matter of time, you see. If I stay in my cocoon longer,
I’ll change from a butterfly to a swallow and then from a swallow to a duck and
then from a duck to a platypus. It’s all just a matter of time. And time I have. I will
wait to become a platypus. I will be an extraordinary creature.

This monologue is the same character as Lucy in the cartoons. In this telling, Van’s
Sister became so angry at the Little Red-Headed Girl’s comments on purity and
calling all non-virgins whores that she set her hair on fire, and has since been
institutionalized. She only has one scene in the entire show, and, here, she tells CB
why she did what she did, and what happened revolving around her pregnancy…

VAN’S SISTER (this is the full conversation, so you know what is cut out)
VAN’S SISTER: What? Why’d I burn the bitches hair off? Torch her tresses? Light her locks?
CB: Tell me.
Her hair was a symbol of innocence and my lighter was a symbol of corruption. God told me to
do it. The devil made me do it. Charles Manson is just so damn persuasive. She is Joan of Arc
and I am the townspeople of Salem. I did it for Jodie Foster! Boredum– Plain and simple. It was
a cry for help a plea for insanity. (flexing her forefinger) Redrum! Redrum!
CB: Be serious!
Can’t we just blame the government or the education system? Puberty? PMS? My parents?
CB: No.
Fine then. I did it because I felt like it.
CB: That’s no excuse.
VS: Really? You used it no less than five minutes ago.
CB: Public displays of affection and random acts of violence are two different things.
Are they? (beat) They say love and hate are the two closest emotions.
CB: I’ll bite. Why do you hate the little red headed girl?
VS: Because you used to love her.
CB: You did it because of me?
Yes. I love you so intensely that it borderlines psychotic. You’re all I ever think of.
CB: Seriously?
Nah, I’m just fucking with you. It’s the lithium talking.
CB: (starting to stand) I’m going to go now.
Wait! Don’t [go]! I was pregnant.
CB: Why can’t you be honest with me like I’ve been with you?
I am. I was pregnant. (beat) Don’t worry. It wasn’t yours. I had just gotten an abortion the day
before and the next day in Biology, we were ironically learning about reproduction. I’m listening
to Miss Rainey talking about fallopian tubes, the uterus, eggs and I’m feeling sick to my stomach
already. Trying to zone out on anything I can. So I start reading a note over Miss Puritanical
Princess’ shoulder and she’s telling her friend (Aping perfection) “how happy she is that she’s a
virgin and that she’s going to stay that way until she gets married and how repulsed she is by all
of the whores at our school” Without thinking, I reached into my pocket for my cute, little, Red
Bic lighter and lit her cute little red hair on fire. And every day in therapy they ask me if I’m
sorry yet and I just can’t can’t be. No matter how hard I try. Bitches like that make me sick.
they’ve made me sick. I am officially sick, psychotic, unrepentant and unremorseful. I’ve been
branded a sociopath and I have no choice but to believe it.

Stupid Fucking Bird – Emma

When I was little I used to make my hand die.

He’d be…screaming or whatever…and if he wouldn’t stop, I’d tell him he was

hurting me. I’d tell him…I’d tell him he was killing me, actually, that’s what I
said, I said “You don’t want to kill Mommy, do you?”
And then I’d…make my hand die. Like this…

And he’d get this little look on his face…and he’d stop. It was very effective.

I can’t help but think now that that was not, perhaps, perfect parenting.

But it worked…And I needed things – anything – that worked…

I was 18 when I got married. Eighteen fucking years old. Hardly out of diapers. To
my first famous leading man. Dixon. Dixon McCready, remember him? No, me
neither…Jesus, the way he said his own named should have tipped me off…
“Dixon.” “Dixon McCready. Rhymes with seedy.” Oy…” Sexual harassment that
just worked out” we called it. I thought that was so funny and charming at the time.
Like we’d beat the system. What did all those “adults” who thought they knew
better, that told us to wait, that told me I was too young, what did they know? I
knew. It was true love! It was perfect. “What could possibly go wrong?” I asked
my mother during one of our stupid, endless fights.

“What could possibly go wrong?”

Well, as it turned out… things. Many things could go wrong… And did.
Wonderfully, impossibly wrong, and at 22 I had my first hit movie, my first tabloid
scandal and I was a divorced mother of a two year old son. And the universe
said… “Well, good luck with that…”

So, yes, that’s right, my point is, indeed, don’t judge. Don’t you dare judge me.
You’ve done it all perfectly, have you? Love. Life. Career. Family. Fidelity.
Passion. Well, all right then. Now, those of you who are…socially responsible,
deeply fulfilled, vegan, charitable, millionaires… who work out and have sex three
times a week, you can judge. But the rest of you shut up. I’m doing the best I can.

I don’t hate him. How could I? I don’t hate him.

But he does…bother me.