Theatre Ink
ONCE UPON
A
MATTRESS:
MUSIC AND
MONOLOGUES
MALE MONOLOGUES 3 Secrets by Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan MICHAEL In second grade I had a girlfriend during recess named Michaellyn. She had blond hair and bright pixie blue eyes. We were the hot couple that spring. We would walk out on the blacktop and people would say, “Michael A. and Michaellyn!” We were really in demand and highly visible. We spent the better part of recess walking around holding hands, making appearances in the gravel section, visiting friends at the jungle gym, dropping by the old dodge ball court to see the old dodge ball gang, still single and smackin’ the ball around. But I was under such pressure. She wanted to be a horse, and she would trot around and make me call her “Cloudy! With a chestnut coat and a white star on my forehead and snout!” When we walked through the playground she would harrumph and clomp her feet with purebred pride. She would take me to the part of the playground hidden by hedges and I would have to pretend to feed her sugar cubes and carrot tops. I didn’t mind for a while, but I just remember this time near the end of our relationship, we were holding hands and one of the tetherball kids asked if we were going to get married. “Yes! Definitely!” I heard myself say. I just stood there and smiled and inside thought, “I am living a lie.” Once a Catholic by Mary O’Malley FATHER MULARKEY Good. Now I want to say a little word to you about the vital importance of purity. You’re all getting to be big girls now. Indeed some of you are bigger than others. Isn’t it a great joy to be young and healthy with all your life before you. Sooner or later you might want to share your life with a member of the opposite sex. […] Now when you’ve met your good Catholic boy and you’re getting to know each other he might suggest a bit of a kiss and cuddle. Well, let him wait. And if he doesn’t want to wait, let him go. Any cuddling and kissing is bound to arouse bad feelings and desires for the intimate union allowed only in Matrimony. (He bangs on the desk) The intimate union of sexes is a sacred act. A duty to be done in a state of grace by a man and his wife and nobody else. So until the day you kneel at the altar with a bridal veil on your head you must never be left alone in a room with a boyfriend. Or in a field for that matter. The girl has a special responsibility because a boy’s passions are more readily aroused, God help him. Show your affections by all means. But keep to holding hands with an occasional kiss on the cheek. A Catholic boy, in his heart of hearts, will be impressed by such insistence on perfect chastity. […] When you’ve the wedding ring on your finger, you can fire away at your heart’s content. Now has any girl any question she’d like to ask? Wertheimer is Dead / Long Live Wertheimer by Steven Schutzman JOSH I have this dream where I’m a stand-­‐up comic. I’m supposed to go on in an hour and I feel great about it, going to knock ‘em dead. But something’s nagging at me, slightly, very slightly. Oh yeah, I remember: I better get my material together. But then I remember I don’t really have any material so I better work some up before I go on. Though I’m not really worried since I have a whole hour. Time passes, time I spend enjoyably thinking about how great I’m going to be on stage. Then it’s a half hour before I’m supposed to go on and I remember again, no material, better do something about the material though I still have a whole half hour. Not to worry. I’ll be great. And so on and so forth, more time passing, more enjoyable thinking, fifteen minutes to go, a little bit worried now, but thinking: I’m a stand-­‐up comic, I must have lots of great material. It’ll come to me. Going to be great. Be a big star. One minute to go, folded into the folds of the curtains. Holy shit! What am I doing? Too late to work up anything now. All I want is the enjoyable thinking, so I enjoyably think some more about how great I’m going to be. Oh it’s wonderful. It’ll be wonderful. Seven seconds to go, six, five, four, three, two, one and you have to understand that this last one second takes forever to pass, everything slowed down, folded in the folds of the curtains. And in that last eternal second I decide not to be a comedian on stage but to turn myself into a bear and scare the shit out of everybody. FEMALE MONOLOGUES The Marriage of Bette and Boo by Christopher Durang BETTE Hurry up, Boo. I want to use the shower. (To the audience) First I was a tomboy. I used to climb trees and beat up my brother Tom. Then I used to break my sister Joanie’s voice box because she liked to sing. She always scratched me though, so instead I tried to play Emily’s cello. Except I don’t have a lot of musical talent, but I’m very popular. And I know more about the cello than people who don’t know anything. I don’t like the cello, it’s too muck work and besides, keeping my legs open that way made me feel funny. I asked Emily if it made her feel funny and she didn’t know what I meant; and then when I told her she cried for two whole hours and then went to confession twice, just in case the priest didn’t understand her the first time. Dopey Emily. She means well. (Calls offstage) Booey! I’m pregnant! (To audience) Actually, I couldn’t be, because I’m a virgin. A married man tried to have an affair with me, but he was married, and so it would have been pointless. I didn’t know he was married until two months ago. Then I met Booey, sort of on the rebound. He seems fine though. (Giddy, happy.) Booey, come on! Promedy by Wade Bradford BEATRIX That's not true. Young women need the Prom. It's a rite of passage as sacred as getting your driver's license or buying your first bra. There are only a few things in life that are guaranteed to be glorious and memorable and sparkling with gowns and cummerbunds. Prom is the quintessential teenage experience. Think of the unlucky grown-­‐ups and the elderly who lament the day they decided not to go to the Prom. It is a key ingredient to a happy and meaningful life. Prom is short for Promenade, a slow, gentle walk through a shady glen, and this beloved ceremony symbolizes our journey from the shadows of adolescence to the bright sunshine of the adult world with all its freedoms. And it may be the only chance I'll ever have to dance with a boy. Maybe I'll never have someone get down on their knee and offer me a diamond ring. Maybe I'll never walk down the aisle with a smug look of bridal triumph. But it is my right, and the right of every plain, frumpy, book-­‐wormish, soon-­‐to-­‐be librarian to have one night of Cinderella magic. Even if we have to go with our cousin, or our gay best friend from tap class, we will have a Prom. And you will help me. Laughing Wild by Christopher Durang WOMAN […] I want to talk to you about life. It’s just too difficult to be alive, isn’t it, and to try to function? There are all these people to deal with. I tried to buy a can of tuna fish in the supermarket, and there was this person standing right in front of where I wanted to reach out to get the tuna fish, and I waited a while, to see if they’d move, and they didn’t – they were looking at the tuna fish too, but they were taking a real long time on it, reading the ingredients on each can like they were a book, a pretty boring book, if you ask me, but nobody has; so I waited a long while, and they didn’t move, and I couldn’t get to the tuna fish cans; and I thought about asking them to move, but then they seemed so stupid not to have sensed that I needed to get by them that I had this awful fear that it would probably do no good, no good at all, to ask them, they’d probably say something like, “We’ll move when we’re goddamn ready, you nagging bitch,” and then what would I do? And so then I started to cry out of frustration, quietly, so as not to disturb anyone, and still, even though I was softly sobbing, this stupid person didn’t grasp that I needed to get by them to reach the goddamn tuna fish, people are so insensitive, I just hate them, and so I reached over with my first, and I brought it down real hard on his head and screamed: ‘Would you kindly move, you asshole!!!’ And the person fell to the ground, and looked totally startled, and some child nearby started to cry, and I was still crying, and I couldn’t imagine making use of the tuna fish now anyway, and so I shouted at the child to stop crying – I mean, it was drawing too much attention to me – and I ran out of the supermarket, and I thought, I’ll take the taxi to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I need to be surrounded with culture right now, not tuna fish. No. 7 Sensitivity