Audition Pieces

1. Younger Male

Jason Bregner from Two Ships Passing

Jason Bregner is a conservative 23-year-old who has just graduated with an MBA. He has returned home to visit his mother - a left-leaning judge who has always mocked his politics. In this case, the issue that divides them centres on how comprehensive Medicare coverage should be. Jason says there are limits to what treatments a government can afford to cover and his mother disagrees, repelled that Jason would suggest that there should be age limits for certain medical procedures. When Jason's mother doesn't take him seriously (again) he unloads on her.

JASON:

"You said being an adult meant making difficult choices and gradually I've come to see that, yes, it's true, if it's easy it's likely wrong. Or maybe it's right for some but wrong for others. But the minute you have to face a reality that is inconvenient or hurtful or actually involves making a hard choice, you run and hide behind whatever "principles" or "ideals" you're managed to trump up to suit the situation.

I wish you'd stop sometime and really take a look at me, really look, and while you're doing that, try thinking about what the world looks like through my eyes. All my life I've wished for that, that you'd stop for one minute and entertain the idea that the road you're travelling might have parallel lines, or ones going this way or that way and maybe they're okay, too, and maybe the girls I date aren't all sluts and maybe the job I landed after working so goddamn hard isn't just an excuse for lame jokes.

Maybe I'm scared about the job. Maybe I'm scared shitless I'm going to screw up. Maybe I'd like some support from you, Mom, not money - support - and I'm sorry the job's at a bank but it's a bank!

(Holds his hands out one above the other, indicating they've been on separate planes.)

We've spent our whole lives going like this. We've never connected unless I made the effort. God Mom, didn't you ever notice it was Gran I told everything to? Well she's dead now, Mom. And I don't have anyone who listens."

(Pages 78-79)

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Lee Kwan from Walking on Water

The time is 1949 and the setting is Munro island on Lake Kawartha. Lee Kwan is the chauffeur for the Munro family and he has taken Mrs. Munro north to pick flowers. She begins prying into his personal life, wondering if there might be a young woman back in town for whom he'd like to take flowers. Lee was born in China and was sent to Canada to join his father; shortly after his arrival the "Exclusion Act" was passed, prohibiting Chinese women from immigrating to join their spouses. So Lee has grown up in an all-male society of bachelor-men and has had very little conventional contact with women. Certainly, there is no girlfriend back in town - but he does remember the kindness of the mother of a childhood chum, Max Bloom. Max's mother is dying - and Lee would, in fact, like to take flowers to her.

LEE:

"When I was a boy Max was the only one who asked me to his house, ever. And Mrs. Bloom always insisted I stay for dinner. My uncle - he was raising me after Dad died - he'd allow it, but under protest. (Shrugs.) They were Jews; he probably thought they'd try to circumcise me. Excuse me.

One summer - I was ten - Mrs. Bloom asked me if I wanted to stay over. I said no, I didn't. I did want to, but I knew Uncle would say no.

That's not true. I said no, because I wasn't sure how they slept. I knew it wasn't four to a room like me and my uncle and two of the Sunrise waiters, three snorers and me. But you don't say no to Mrs. Bloom. She went to the laundry and in front of everyone she told Uncle, "Lee's staying over; get his toothbrush."

But, by eleven, she's having major regrets; she's yelling at us to shut up and then she comes to the room. Lights out. She goes over to Max and I see her shape in the dark, I see her lean over his bed for a moment - she's murmuring something I can't hear. Then she comes to my bed. I'm terrified. Terrified, curious - too - what is this crazy woman doing, this "mother" doing? And she does this: She pulls the covers up around me, she leans over and says something, not English, for sure not Cantonese. I'm pretending to be asleep, I feel her breath, and then she kisses my forehead. First kiss.

As soon as she's gone, Max wants to talk again, but I don't. I need to think. And this is what I thought. "This is what it's like. This must be what a mother does. This must be what happens in a family." And I swore, with all the ferocity a ten-year-old can muster: someday I will get this for myself."

(Pages 81-82)

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Wesley Marshall from Sister Jude

Wesley is engaged in a mighty wrestling match with his personal demons. When an electrical storm hits his town, he climbs to its highest point, the parking lot on a hill popular with young lovers. Wesley stands in the empty lot with coat hangers in both hands, arms raised, inviting the wrath of God.

WESLEY:

(Muttering.) "Rain. Come on rain. More lightning. Make it rain hard. More electricity! Good. I have to tell you this now. This hill is as close as I can get to you. There's nothing between us now. It's just me, then sky, then you.

Forgive me for I have sinned. I have sinned repeatedly and with ingenuity. I have gone out of my way to sin. I have slow-danced with the Devil.

Every Friday since my late teens I have put buttons the size of dimes in Globe and Mail honour boxes, and then I have removed not one but two papers so that Mom and I could do the Jumbo Crosswords separately. I told her I paid for the Globes out of my own pocket and I have knowingly accepted her gratitude.

There's worse.

I broke the Crown Derby gravy boat accidentally and then begged Jude to glue it back up before Mom could see. I crumpled somebody's bumper in the K-mart parking lot and I didn't leave a note on their windshield. I have never smoked a cigarette but I have wanted to. OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD I lie even to you. I HAVE smoked a cigarette. I found it on the street and I lit it - I knew how from watching Jude - I lit it and then I walked down Munro Avenue and I felt - virile.

There's worse. I come up here often. I come up here on Armour Hill every night there's no moon. This is where Jude and Billy used to come and park. I saw them here. Once. Twice. More than that. Many more times. I saw them and I saw others. This is where everyone else from school comes to park and pet and feel and fornicate and I come up here too - I still come up here - and I sneak from car to car and I look in the windows, sometimes there're too steamy to see anything but God it's true and I do this night after night after night. I don't want to do it! I just do it!

I LIKE doing it! I don't want to do it but I do and I can't stop! (Raising coat hangers in each hand.) Now you know it all. Everything I do and everything I think. They aren't the thoughts and actions of a worthy man, are they. (Raising arms higher.) You've got to let me know. You've got to send me a sign.

(Throwing his arms high.) Strike me down oh mighty heavenly father strike me down with a bolt of lightning I don't have rubber-soled shoes on, hit me hit me hit me I am the willing vessel of your wrath hit me hit me hit me… Strike me down… Smite me… (Pausing; lowering arms slowly; joy in face and voice.) Why haven't you - struck - me down?

Am I a worthy man?

Are my sins forgiven?

Hallelujah."

(p. 156, A Perfect Piece. Note: Sister Jude is available from the Playwrights Union of Canada (see links) in copyscript format. This monologue is included in the Playwrights Canada Press anthology, A Perfect Piece. ISBN 0-88754-498-3.)

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Boy, from Into

The play Into was inspired by a short story by Julio Cortazar entitled "The Southern Thruway". In it, a traffic jam forms on the expressway leading in to Paris; the stranded commuters are forced to form a loose social union. Into moves the jam to outside a North American metropolis and extends it further - when the hours grow to days and months, a quartet of commuters are forced to form a confederacy. It's an unlikely quartet: a businessman, a beauty, an urban nun and a disaffected white youth (Boy).

BOY and the Businessman have fought, the latter having no patience for Boy's suburban aimlessness. Boy stormed off angrily, intending to join one of the other confederations in the giant jam, but soon he returns to his little unit, bruised and bloodied.

BOY:

"I don't understand… I don't… why do they hate me… All of them back as far as you can see, they hate me, they all hate me. I went looking for some other group to hang out with. Fine, I think, you guys don't want me, I'll go live with the Chipeaters. So I went to them and said, "Hey there, Chipeaters, what's happening?" And they yelled at me to screw off. And it was the same with the Dental Confederation. I said, "Hey Dentists, can I join you?" They told me to wait at the side of the road. They had these chairs set up and old magazines and a fish tank. Which was cool, but I waited and I waited until I realized it was a dentist trick. They were going to make me wait there till I rotted. Dentists make me mad.

And after that it was just one thing after another. The Timid Zone set off all their car alarms at the very sight of me. The Volvos promised they'd form a committee to see about letting me in. As if. And every other group turned me away too, until finally I got to the crest of the hill and there they were. The Disaffected White Youth. My people. As far as the eye could see. A whole valley-full. Their music rose up like the holy sound of cars crashing.

I could smell hamburger cooking. Just like when you're sitting in your car at the back door of the Sizzle Pit waiting for your girlfriend to get off work. And there were babes. Real babes. Disaffected white babes. Not ones like up there in the Bourgeois Confederacy where they won't speak to you unless you're taking French fucking immersion.

I stood at the top of the hill and I said, "Hey! Disaffected White Youths! I have come from far way through many alien lands to join you!" And all was silent. Until someone threw something. At first I thought somebody was throwing me a big fucking piece of hash. You know, a welcoming gesture. But it was a rock! And then there was another rock and then another and they were hitting me, they hurt, they hurt me and it was like each rock was saying, "Get the hell out goof, we don't want you."

They didn't want me! But I know those people! They live on my street. Maybe not exactly my street but one just like it and now they're throwing rocks! Like they hated me! Why do they hate me? What did I do to them? What can I do? Where can I go?"

(Pp. 53-55, Into long version - copyscript available from the Playwrights Union of Canada.)

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