Title: Beautiful Faces in Silver Places
Characters: James Annuals and Tyler Simone. Both are homeless.
Setting: Garbage cans.
Scene 1
(Tyler is sitting next to his trashcan, smiling at a baby. James enters.)
James: What’s that? Never mind. Who is that?
Tyler: Someone I’ve never met!
James: I can see that.
Tyler: I found her in this box. Isn’t she beautiful? I will be patient. I think she should wear pink. No, blue!
James: Ah, look. The radio is working.
Tyler: Play something soothing. I will name her Marla Jennings.
James: why’s that?
Tyler: it says so on the card!
James: (listening to the radio now) Pop culture has a grasp of everything we know. Oh, what a bore. You take one concept and you look at another. You relate to both. You feel original. Palahniuk is the combined efforts of everyone he has ever known. And so are we.
Tyler: she’s got the most beautiful eyes. Isn’t Marla adorable when she sleeps? I remember when I slept like that. It’s been years.
James: we are a breed that is very much alive. We are asleep because we want to see a lie. We wake because we don’t want to live just to cry.
Tyler: Oh, hush. Now she’s awake again!
James: Marla Jennings is famous. She’s been famous before her birth. How did she end up here, with us?
Tyler: Like I said, I simply found her in this box!
James: I want to drink milk.
Tyler: why drink milk? It’s too soothing. You need a flame in your throat.
James: Gin, Bourbon? All I have are matches.
Tyler: Open wide and maybe society can help you out.
James: Puzzle pieces never fit like they used to back in ’89.
Tyler: Marla will play with the puzzles. She will make them all fit.
James: Fit like they’ve never fit before. Trees in parking lots. Hotels in suburbia. Truth from a magician. Truth from politicians. Babies for the homeless.
I’m going to sleep.
(James lays down and falls asleep. Tyler takes the blanket Marla is wrapped in and unwraps it. Nothing falls out. Marla never exisited.)
Tyler: Captivation.
this is just a small part of a script i’m writing for theater. we’re currently studying a style of playwriting called theater of the absurd. its where nothing matters, but at the same time, everything matters. little makes sense, but theres a subtle meaning in it.
