TERRY: Go off and leave this house wide open and all you have to say is, "'Lo, daughter?" Show some sense and lock up when you go out! And don't tell me "What if the Lord comes callin'" - If the Lord comes callin' He'll understand. Burglars everywhere these days - don't any of you read the papers! I just hope there's a home to come back to when I get back from Washington. (pleased to see their reaction) Ha! That got your attention, all right, didn't it! Well! I've just been elected a Delegate to - (rummages in purse) - I can read it to you quicker'n I can tell it. (pulls out paper, reads) "WORLD CONGRESS OF WOMEN WORKERS CALLED. The National Women's Trade Union League of America has called a World Congress of working women to meet in Washington on October 23rd. This will precede the Labor Conference called under the League of Nations." (explains) The League of Nations didn't provide a vote for women. So - we're going to outflank 'em. This Call is being sent to the Women's Trade Unions in 34 countries. (taps news article) It is signed by Mary Anderson, Director of The Women's Bureau of The U.S. Department of Labor - (to her mother) You got that, mama - The U.S. Department of Labor - can't call that "Bolshevicki stuff", can you! ("A speech") On October 23rd, 1919, for the first time in the history of the world, elected representatives of the organized working women of all countries will sit together to discuss - and act upon - the problems of working men and women everywhere! (drops speechifying) Mom, invitations have been sent to labor organizations in England, Ireland, France, Holland, Denmark - 34 of them! The Call says us women gotta act now. Assume new responsibilities. (quotes from Call) "Fellowship and conference together can alone guarantee mutual faith and joint action, which shall make for universal industrial justice!" So we're goin' to write out our recommendations and send 'em to the Men's Conference. Us women are goin' to influence the policy determinations for the whole world!

#3 (2 min.)

Adapted from SONGS IN A STRANGE LAND © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Sophie Clery's "Ground Floor Rear" Studio, Greenwich Village, NYC. Afternoon, July, 1971. SOPHIE sees a young man peering into her flat through open French Doors, and on sight, recognizes his "1000-yard look")

SOPHIE: You're trespassing. (picks up Walther .38 from work table, points it at him) You're invading my privacy. I am tired of ex-grunts with in-country eyes barging in here. Even in Nam I wouldn't talk to a grunt with In-country eyes unless he was in my ward. I'll bet you haven't been out a week. (relents) Oh, what the hell, you look harmless. (puts gun back on table) Have a seat - take the lead off - my name's Sophie. (beat) Kind of nick name. Actually it's Moira. (beat) Means "Fate" in Greek and in Irish - "soft." That's how come "Sophie" - when I was little I couldn't say the Irish and it made me mad when anybody called me what I couldn't say. To keep the peace Pop called me "Softy." After a while "Softy" got to be "Sophie" - (beat) - Why don't I get us a beer? (takes a limping step toward kitchen, sees question on her companion's face) Satchel- charge. Caught me here - (turns and points to wounded place on back of thigh) It's why I'm not still back there in Nam with Peg and Lisa. (explains) Semi-mobile hospital - Pleiku Province. (beat) Our perimeter wasn't all that secure. Jungle right up to our tents. Choppers tried to cut it back with agent orange - so close, if the wind shifted you'd think the target was our tents - but it didn't do any good: VC still ran into our compound and threw satchel- charges. Sometimes right into our operating room. We took incoming rounds, too -- some of the nurses got hit by that. But I caught mine from a satchel-charge. (straight) That's what I get for being an Old-fashioned girl. I mean, someday I'll probably have kids, okay? So I thought when they ask me, "Mom, what'd you do in the war?" I'd have something to tell them --- (eyes go suddenly blank) --- Never thought -- on the Ward -- most of 'em 18, 19 --- corpses ought to come older'n that. Half the time we didn't have enough dope to ease the -- I hated that! Richest goddam country in the world and I have to decide who lives, who dies, because we don't have enough medication to go round. Back there, if Uncle Sam had really been a man, I'd've killed him. (shakes it off) Well, no more pus and bedpans for me! I'm in a nice, antiseptic ad agency now - Price, Leverton, Muelbach and Hartley - writing copy. (beat) What kind of job you looking for?

#4 (1:30 min.)

Adapted from A PARTY FOR LOVERS © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Time And Place, Vito Vitale's Master Bedroom in a NYC East Fifties Brownstone, first Saturday in May, 1973. DIANE DELBERT, from a small Kansas town, and a Grad Student of Econometrics, is 24. At her second champagne party in less than 12 hours, she has just learned that two members of her fiance's family have villas in Europe. With her head full of champagne-induced giddiness, she tries to cope with this news)

DIANE: (slightly drunk) Villas? Villas? Your brother and sister both got villas? (ponders this) What I wanna know is what makes a villa a villa? How come it's not maybe a cottage or somethin'. I mean, who decides? Tha's wha's always gettin' away from me - somebody decidin' what anything is, or what it's called ... or what is goin' to be done about -- whatever. I mean, I've never even seen a villa. They don't have villas in La Pere, Kansas. Know where Le Pere, Kansas is? 'S b'tween Ellsworth an' Black Wolf on the Smokey Hill River. An' they don't have villas there. Jus' houses. (taps her chest) Born in a house. (afterthought) Steamboat Gothic. (beat) Verandahs --- all way round. (addendum) Grew up in my house. (sober thought) Torn down, now though. For a parkin' lot. (admonishing finger) But - grew up in it firs'. (sad) Always thought I'd be married in my house. Too late, now. Bulldozers got there firs'. (beat) Anybody here b'lieve in immor - tality? I use' t' b'lieve 'n immor - tality. (announcement) Helen-a-Troy stood righ' b'side my bed, once. (she can see it) When I was li'l' - I knew that my room was on the direct road from Camelot to - Alpha Centauri. (beat) An' now 't's gone. My room. (tears) Fast as you can make tracks, bulldozers rub 'em out. Far as you can see, any direction, nothin' but parkin' lots. Which is why I gotta fine somethin' out. Things keep happenin' an' happenin' an' I never can fine out who decides. (beat) I have this fantasy -- I'm a Hydrogen Bomb. One day I fine the guy who's the Big Decider -- Var-roooom!

#5 (1:15 min.)

Adapted from LADYHOUSE BLUES © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(The Time And Place: Summer, 1919. St. Louis, the Madden Kitchen on a hot early morning. TERRY, 18, in cotton nightgown, picks up a basin and pitcher and heads for the porch, to wash up. The following is her reply to her elder sister Helen's question, "And where do you think you're going?")

TERRY: You hear that, Dot, where'm I going? (turns back to Helen) I'm going out on the porch to wash up, Helen. In my nightgown. (patiently) We're the only second-storey flat in the neighborhood - (points) - Far as you can see, one-storey houses. But if they could see up into the porch - if there was a spyglass in every window of every house, watching me - it wouldn't matter if I was mother- naked. On the other end of every spyglass would be another woman. (to Dot) "Ladyhouses" - that's what the mailman calls them, Dot. Full of widows. Or women waiting for their men to come home from France. There isn't a man left in one of them for three blocks in any direction. (starts to go, remembers) Oh, yes, there is, too - Mr. Krausmeyer, 97 years old. He was too old even for the Civil War. Probably the only neighborhood in St. Louis like this - working class, and German - families settled in these old houses when they came over, and never moved. Those that weren't drafted, volunteered - to prove how "American" they are - men 35 and 40 years old. (inward, now) So all the men are gone ... that's why it seems so - still. In the evenings. You take a walk - the blinds are drawn - in all the windows ... there's a hush over everything. (rouses herself) Well, better get last night's sweat off. (she goes)

#6 (1 minute, plus)

Adapted from LADYHOUSE BLUES © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Time And Place: Summer, 1919, St. Louis, the Madden Kitchen, evening. DOT, early 20's, married and pregnant with her second child, is being pestered by her mother, Liz, while trying to read a book during a visit home

DOT: Mama -- I'm trying to read this book. I don't want to read it, I have to read it. I'm ignorant. (beat) George married me because of how I looked - (ticks off points) - "Glamorous", "New York Model", "Darling of the Day" - we met at the White House. (smiles) Poor man didn't find out till after the wedding that the White House was my prize for selling War Bonds - (laughs) - sell the most War Bonds and they'll make the President kiss your ass. (beat) George is Old School Tie - his father entered him at Groton the day he was born. But d'you know what his father seriously told me - "A boy of George's class needs to learn the common touch." So he enrolled George at Yale instead of Harvard. (shrugs) And sooner or later even a "glamorous New York Model" has to pen her mouth. I had mine pried open by George's Great Aunt Delia. Great Aunt Delia Bindless is a dynasty woman - what Helen's mother-in-law would be like if she controlled a family fortune. I gave George a male heir and she still wasn't certain I'd do. However, with another Bindless in the oven - (pats stomach)- she's just about ready to concede me a place at her table. (sits, with a kind of rueful satisfaction and resumes reading)

#7 (1:30 min.)

Adapted from NOT NOW (One Act Play) © 2001 Kevin O'Morrison

(The Time And Place: Municipal Building NYC, the Morning Of The Day "The System" Collapses nationwide. Citizens, come to the Municipal Building for help, have been been herded into a Processing Line, where FLO, in her 20's, reacts to the dead body dumped into a hole in the floor, near where she and others stand in line)

FLO: (to persons front and back of her in line) I don't want to think about what that dead body over there means. I don't like to think about that. Or the future. What I like to think about is now. Right now. (firmly) Yes. Right now is what I like to think about. I don't mean knowing about right now and then thinking about it. I mean just that I know it is right now, and I like to think about that. What I like to think about is how we are all here - each of us with a place. In this line. Separate. But kind of connected. I mean, take Mr. Pring here - he's Head Reservations Clerk, Federated Hotels Corporation, Ltd. We know that, right? (without waiting for confirmation, turns to Connie, in front of her) And you're a free lancer. Now, like Mr. Pring says, it probably won't matter in the end - nothing probably matters in the end. All the long line of people - from the Beginning, if there was one, to Now - probably won't matter in the end. But here we are - we have this - this kind of connection. The fella in front of Mr. Pring is 95th On Line. Mr. Pring is 96th. You're 97th. I'm 98th. Zack, here (indicates young man behind her), is 99th. I like that! (beat: confession) I've had nothing in front or back of me anywhere else. Since I was 10, I've had nothing front or back. So, like I was saying, the fella in front of Mr. Pring is 95th. Mr. Pring is 96th. You're 97th. I'm 98th. And Zack is 99th. And I like that. That's what I like to think about. My place On Line. My place in time. I'm focussing on that. (with that, she raises her head and faces forward in the line, shutting the others out)

Return to My Home Page

Or My Farewell Page

Or Other Monologs

Young Women (cont'd)
Young Men
Young Men (cont'd)
Older Women
Older Women (cont'd)
(New) More Monologs For Older Women
Older Men
Older Men (cont'd)

(New)More Monologs For Older Men

E-mail