#9 (1:30 min.)

Adapted from ON LINE (One Act Play) © 2001 Kevin O'Morrison

(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)

#10 (2 min. plus)

Adapted from ON LINE (One Act Play) © 2001 Kevin O'Morrison

(Municipal Building NYC, The Morning of The Day "The System" Collapses, and The Bureaucrats - as the only ones possessing any kind of social organization - take over. DORCAS, late 20's, has anticipated the collapse, and is now calling a cadre of followers to "Seize The Day")

DORCAS: Comrades, the word "Collapse" will be on everyone's lips today. It will frighten them. Look out the window at the mobs forming in the streets and you will know it has already frightened some. (more oratorical, now) But for us Civil Servants "Collapse" means "Opportunity" - if we dare to seize it! Let me read you something which must inspire you as it has me - an excerpt from one of the greatest Civil Service Manuals of all time! I read: "This volume updates all Data on Administrative Manpower Structure, Dynamics of Staffing, Location of Pay Authorities and Funds in the remaining Government Sectors." Those words, my friends and colleagues, those inspiring words, were written by Fulgidus, a Roman Civil Servant, even as the Gates of Rome were falling to the Visigoths! Let them now inspire us all! Consider how Fulgidus - in the midst of ruin - kept his eye on his Reality Factors and guaranteed Continuity of The Service! And before Fulgidus - in other dark hours elsewhere - there was Pileser (pronounced "Pie-LEE-zer") of Ninevah; Humbaba of Babylon, and Re Nekht of Memphis, Egypt - from whom we descend in an unbroken line of tradition for more than 3,000 years! Let you not flinch, today, from doing what we must - to secure all fiscal resources before they fall into other, less qualified hands: such as Police or National Guard. There are those who say that we desk-bound ones are by type and nature, too timid to seize the day; that we will shrink from the violence they are sure will erupt at the Pressure Points where Power resides. (rises to full oratorical pitch) To them I say, YOU DO NOT KNOW OR UNDERSTAND THE RELIGIOUS POWER OF PROCEDURE, THE AWE-INSPIRING DISCIPLINE AND SANCTITY OF THE PROCESSING LINE!

#11 (2 min.)

Adapted from LADYHOUSE BLUES © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Summer, 1919. St. Louis, the Madden Kitchen. HELEN, 24, exiled from her husband and infant son because of tuberculosis, takes offence when her "baby" sister refers to her German-American husband as a "Foreigner")

HELEN: Foreigner - where'd you get that idea - Heinz Otto and his family are not foreigners! Because they talk German to the old folks, that doesn't make them "Kaiser Lovers"! Damned war, damned city - half the people in it are German, trying to prove they're more American than anybody. A Dachshund puppy - (for a moment she can't go on) - a puppy - was stoned to death right outside our door! (coughs) Account of Heinz Otto! (coughs) Berlin Avenue changed to Pershing Boulevard! Well, Heinz Otto served with Pershing. In Mexico. He was wounded there - got a medal. Wounded. That's why he wasn't in this war! (coughs) He's not a Kaiser Lover - you got that from Dot! (through a cough) Don't tell me! You can see her thinking it. (pure malice) She drinks. too, you know. (mimics) "I must go to my room to freshen up." Then she comes back chewing cloves so you won't smell the whiskey - (takes glass from drying rack) - Oh, she doesn't fool me - butting her nose into everything! (measures medicine into glass) Flaunting her husband's money. (coughing even as she spits out her rage) Well, my husband pays for me and don't you forget it! (even as she drinks) High faluting New York airs, it's not like she lived here. (drinks) You watch! She'll talk Mama out of selling the farm if Mr. Grady does have a buyer. (gulps medicine) Why d'you t hink she went downtown with Mama - pregnant, in all this heat! (coughs) Comes to that, why d'you think she's here? (raging) I know what you're all trying to do - (gulps last of medicine) I know what everybody is trying to do! (coughs) I ought to be in a sanitarium! I can't be with my husband, I can't be with my son, I'm infectious! (with point, she dips glass into sterile solution) See! I'm sterilizing my glass. I'm infectious! (sets glass on drying rack) I ought to be locked away - in a sanitarium - (tears flow down her cheeks) Well, I went to a sanitarium. When we moved to Arkansas. (weeps) I kept hemorrhaging there (haunted) Heinz Otto doesn't understand - he loves me, he does - but he doesn't understand! Germs eat at more than your lungs - (bitter) - It was his family sent me to that sanitarium. No way to fight them. (the awe still on her) They're such an old family - they were vons in the old country. (nods to self as though confirming it) von Kluge - that was their name, von Kluge. (she pronounces it fawn Kloo-geh) - They go all the way back to the Holy Roman Empire ...

#12 (2 1/2 min.)

Adapted from LADYHOUSE BLUES © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Summer, 1916. St. Louis, the Madden Kitchen. 3 years earlier than when the play, itself, takes place. As a Vegetable Vendor calls his wares from the alley below, EYLIE, 13, talks to her older sister, who is about to be married)

EYLIE: (over shoulder as she listens to street cries) Sis - can I ask you somethin'? Do you ever dream about leavin' St. Louis? (without waiting) I do - even if I'm only 13, I been dreamin' about leavin' St. Louis ever since I heard there was someplace else. (beat) But if I did --- leave, that is - know what I'd miss most? 'Twouldn't be the summer heat. Nor the winter cold, nuther. Nor the smell a lilies a the valley in the springtime. Nor cardinals flashin' through the trees in the back yard. (beat) It'd be the street cries. (imitates: musical sing-song) "Collards, spinach, kale - I got car-rots. Greens, fresh greens - I got cabbages!" (beat -- her doubt palpable in the air) Makes me think a when we were back on the farm. (beat) Probably wouldn't be different, though. If I ever did get away, I mean -- (beat) Like, take this woman on a wall over to the museum...maybe 4,000 years old, Egyptian. Saw her on a school visit t'other day. She's in a boat -- bein' taken somewhere. Lotsa bustle all around her. Men - leadin' bullocks onto the boat. Fancy dressed men, too. Teacher said one of 'em even looked like a priest a some kind. An' there she is - in the middle of it - very still. Like she's dreamin' it all...Or someone else -- is dreamin' it for her - like she's got no say. (turns to sister) Can I ask you somethin' else? (again without waiting) Havin' to become a Catholic so's you can marry Heinz Otto next month, an' all - how do you - feel? - (to cover sudden embarrassment) - With his family being so differnt. (sees sister's hurt reaction) Oh, Sis - I didn't mean to upset you. I just meant, why, I'll bet with a man as handsome as Heinz Otto you'd have agreed to become just about any old kind of religion. (beat) Which is kinda why it just came to me --- all us Madden girls never had any real religion. I mean, growin' up on the farm, we learned the Bible - I can still recite all the Books, clear to Revelation - but we weren't anything. So when George asked Dot to become his religion, or Heinz Otto asks you - or if somebody I marry someday is something, I got no real reason not to become what he is, have I? (having arrived at the point of her recitation, she eyes her sister shyly) So when you went to Heinz Otto's priest for instruction - did you just learn a bunch of stuff, or were you -- changed? (beat) 'Cause if'n you weren't, I don't hardly see the point of it.

#13 (1:15 min.)

Adapted from LADYHOUSE BLUES © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Summer, 1916. St. Louis, the Madden Kitchen. EYLIE, 16, youngest of the Madden Sisters, learns from her elder sister, Helen, that their mother has gone downtown to the office of Mr. Grady)

EYLIE: Mama and Dot went downtown to see Mr. Grady? (lightning conclusion) Well, certain sure she didn't go down there in this heat to talk real estate - he's been after her to marry him an' she's givin' in! Mom's still pretty juicy - I've seen the men lickin' their chops after her when she goes by - like dogs after a bitch in heat. An' I've heard Mr. Grady. (imitates) "Miz Madden, darlin' - make me the happiest man in the world - (hand to breast, she drops to one knee) - let me change your name to mine." (laughs) Whoo-ee! "Change your name to mine!" If you could've seen what happened when she married that boarder, Raimondo - (acts it out) First Morning After The Honeymoon, Raimondo the Bridegroom - an' (he thinks) Lord an' Master of the Household - goes out on the front porch of mama's old house on Dodier Street to get the morning paper. Under the doorbell he sees - (melodramatic) - not one nameplate, but TWO! (mimics Raimondo's disbelief) "What-what?" (mimes prying name-plate loose) He pries the name-plate loose an' shows it to mama - (shows it to Audience-as-LIZ) "My heart, what does this mean?" (replies as LIZ) "Why, honey-love, it says plain as plain, 'Miz Madden'." (as Raimondo) "But Light of my Life, are you not now 'Miz Raimondo de la Cruz'?" (as LIZ) "Not the longest day you live - I give up bein' a Butler to be a Madden. An' it was 10 years an' 6 young'uns 'fore that took. But I've growed into the name now, so you might's well get used to it - I ain't aimin' to change it." (laughs) Oh, that was a sight, poor man was fit to be tied - shortest marriage on record.

#14 (2+ min.)

Adapted from HONEY © 2000 Kevin O'Morrison

(Time, July, 1929. Chicago. Honey Burke, 22 and a stunner, mulls her current fate)

HONEY: Anybody asts me, a girl should oughta be in charge a her own story - wich this is the numb a the thing, the gorilla don't ast me nothin! (glares at world) Nah, the gorilla don't ast me, he just tells me! "Come to goddam Chicago," he says, "or end up bottom a the river." Course he don't actual say it this way, he just says, "You're gonna like goddam Chicago," an Toddy is the one says his, "Or else" - but "Bottom a the river" is wat he means. Wye I am ever put on this earth I don't know! I try to figure this one ever since I am old enough to see how the dames I grow up with in Hell's Kitchen are wore out with havin kids before they're thirty, an beat up by their husbands inta the bargain - wich this is wen I realize I gotta fine a way out or I will end up one a them. (beat) It takes me a wile, but I fine a way out - (beat) - Actual, it is Father Brannigan, runs our parish choir back in the ole neighborhood, puts me onta how to do it - alla time tellin me wat great pipes I got. So I work hard, pay my dues, sing my way up through every crummy beer joint onna West Side, get pawed by every creep buys a beer an thinks this gives him office, till I get wat looks like my big break - New Year's Eve a this ding dong year, I am finely gonna be Headline Canary in Charley Neuf's - wich this is one a New York's classiest speaks - an along comes the gorilla an he shanghai's me outa New York to here, an I don't know how I am ever gonna get out from unner him! (beat) Take I go to this new Chicago priest to ast him for advice an I sit there like a dummy till he has to ast me wye I am there - account since the gorilla grabs me, I don't know who I am anymore, so I don't know wat to tell him. Cause how'm I gonna tell him wat I can't even tell myself? I mean, I am just gettin to really know who I am wen I get my big break in Charlie Neuf's Speakeasy. Wich if anybody asts me who I am, then, I tell 'em, "I am Honey Burke," account by the time I sing my way to Charlie Neuf's I have earned star billin an it is okay to say this is who I am. Before that, back the ole neighborhood wen I am a girl an anybody asts me, I have to tell 'em, "I am Jim Burke's daughter." Wich this means lotsa things: like you lay a hand on me, you know Jim Burke is gonna climb all over you. It also means accounta Jim Burke ain't no crybaby an is a fighter, it is likely his daughter ain't no crybaby an is also a fighter. Also, too, back there --- an I don't never really give this a good think up to now --- I am Molly Rogan's daughter, wich this is who ma is before she marries my da, an wen I am little an I come to her with a beef she always says to me, "You just remember you're my daughter an my daughter plays the hand that's dealt her." So if you are Molly Rogan's daughter you also ain't no crybaby...(considers her statement, nods her head in agreement, sits)

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