by Órla Price
Content warnings: medications, suicidal ideation.
Play audio recording while you read: press the play button or click on the title to open a new tab in SoundCloud
SCENE ONE
Aisling (20) lying on her bed staring at the ceiling. There is a phone face up in one of her palms. There is a pile of books beside the bed and a chest. On the chest is a glass of water and blisters of pills and pill bottles. Besides Aislings other palm is a medication leaflet. Her phone buzzes, she lifts it and answers.
Voice on phone – MAGDA
Where are you?
ASH (short for Aisling)
Uhhhhh, it’s a difficult question, could I have 50:50 or phone a friend?
MAGDA
Not funny, also you would NEVER phone a friend.
ASH
Have you tapped my phone? Maybe I phone many friends that are not you.
MAGDA
Scoffs
ooookkkk, right back to business – get out of your room!
ASH
No, I’m actually very busy
MAGDA
Doing what? Nothing?!?
ASH
Nothing as a concept as has been debated for millennia, there is no objective evidence to suggest it exist…
MAGDA
Ash, shut up
ASH
… no objective reality, there is no nothing…
MAGDA
seriously!!
ASH
You could say nothing is in fact… nothing
MAGDA
Come out now
ASH
What so I can talk about nothing, and you can tell me to shut up??
MAGDA
I’m not going to do that
ASH
It is just what you have been doing
MAGDA
Nothing is an impossibility as you have said, so you will talk about something
ASH
Wow you listened to me, sort of-
MAGDA
-Ash
ASH
So I’ll talk about something then and you’ll tell me to shut up??
MAGDA
Right, I don’t deserve this.
ASH
Deserve what?
MAGDA
This absolute shite when I am trying to help
Silence, Aisling rubs her temples.
ASH
I’ll be down soon, cycling
MAGDA
Yer da can’t give you a lift?
ASH
Out
MAGDA
You’ll cycle after drinking?
ASH
There is no other way I fear, I put my life in danger for your company
MAGDA
Laughs
One day we’ll live somewhere with a bus stop.
ASH
Such ambition, I can’t believe that they worry about you in career guidance.
MAGDA
Ok well we’ll see you soon to court drunken cycling danger, I love you-
ASH
-I…
Dial tone sounds. Aislings figure moves off the bed and into the background
A man enters the stage in a suit beaming
GAME SHOW HOST
Hi there everyone, welcome to the socialising shooow.
Gestures hand as if to raise some applause.
We have three contestants tonight performing for our audience, yes all you lovely people. If you’re not familiar with the game show and its rules, this is a game-show based on performance. You lovely audience will be judging the performances. Don’t worry I’ll introduce every round, any known rules and the best criteria to judge by as we go along. My name is FEAR and I will be your host tonight, good evening.
Bows dramatically and resumes.
Drags the next words out
laaaydees aaand geeeentlemen –
That’s right you have to choose a side, that’s the first part of the performance, round 1 is what we call ‘The costume round’. Some good criteria to judge this round by is the ability to conform visually to ‘a side’ but a huge element of performing this round well is to give the appearance of looking ‘well’. Someone who appears well is usually someone we do not worry about. The other contestants feeling concern for you based on your costume or behaviours will plummet your score and it will also make the contestant in question feel guilty, glances behind – You don’t want to feel guilty do you?-
Aisling is in the background in shadow looking in a wardrobe mirror, she is muttering to herself and now becomes louder
ASH
-Why do I feel so guilty about wanting to say something? I want to tell them, that there’s a name a label for this. That I’m not just weird and miserable and awkward, that I can’t help it sometimes. But it seems like a cop-out, it seems like an excuse, it seems like asking forgiveness for my personality. When they referred me to the hospital, I was crying-I was in floods and then they handed me that prescription. The little piece of paper -looked like a ticket, I could go somewhere else in my mind, like I could get out of all this, this confusion, this darkness and overwhelm like something in the middle could exist, like I could just swallow this thing and be more like everyone else, be normal, win higher scores in the popularity game. Well, I have been swallowing these things for a while now and it’s not that I have become normal, it’s that I have become someone who doesn’t care. That sounds liberating, doesn’t it? Except it’s not because the thing is now, I don’t care about anything, I don’t care about art, about music about … I don’t care about caring. The pain is gone, and that edge is gone, that sharp edge is gone but everything is an effort now, everything is an effort now and if it wasn’t for other people worrying I might just lie down forever… as it is the show goes ooonn –
GAMESHOW HOST
-Well thank you for the interlude but I am not sure it will contribute to your score in this first performance. All your friends are ladies as such, gals, girls, huns, etcetera and perform so well as such it’s like they’re not even performing at all…
Aisling has walked out and emerges in a hoodie and cap.
Ah we have chosen ‘don’t look at me’ again, we might need to expand and diversify to please the audience of judges, they’re a tough crowd tonight, the audience of judges are counting their scores, a repeat performance of ‘don’t look at me’ has not grabbed their attention, they’re consulting now …
Squints into the audience as if to read
Actor will need to improvise here depending on the numbers of the most visible score-cards the audience holds up
A lot of decimal points and zeros here, I do believe that’s a grand total of one across all the score cards, oooofff, well let’s see how our player performs in round 2….
About the author
Órla Price (she/they)
I am an Irish writer, artist, and trainee art psychotherapist living in London. I support young disabled and/or neurodivergent people, developing and running wellbeing groups. I am neurodivergent myself and passionate about furthering understanding of neurodivergency, mental health and the benefits of creativity and play.
I am working on my first play ‘All My Friends Are Lonely Too’. In the play 3 friends go to their local pub with a lot on their minds, however they are prevented from talking properly when all their interactions have been split into ‘rounds’ by an eccentric host and judged by an audience with score-cards. The play explores themes like masking, straight passing and the ways and reasons people might perform socially. An extract of the play featured in the ‘Pinch of Vault festival’. You can find Órla on Instagram.
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