Many years ago I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work with the incredible dramaturg Iris Turcott. I'd sent her some of my work including "Clarissa on her Deathbed" to which she said she loved it but it really wasn't me. It was a play about a young girl who talked to her stuffed bunny rabbit because she thought her mother's spirit had transferred to it when she'd died (possibly after Clarissa pushed the morphine button to ease her pain). We reworked the play--okay, completely wrote a new play scene by painstaking scene--that essentially had the same set. That's it. That play became "Dressing Amelia"--auditions for the Bottletree Production are soon btw.
Since Clarissa is never going to be staged (the bunny actually comes to life at the end and moves around and who knows how I thought that would be accomplished) I've reworked a bunch of it into this long monologue for a young actor.
THE BEST DAY EVER… NOT! By Chloe Whitehorn
Clark, fifteen, is trying to figure out what to wear to his father’s funeral.
CLARK: Whatever I want! This would be like the best day ever, if it weren’t like … totally not that. There are so many options. Mom really shouldn’t have said WHATEVER I want, ‘cause that’s just open to way too much interpretation. I mean, I could wear pajamas. Or jeans and my “Haikus are easy/ but sometimes they don’t make sense/ refrigerator” t-shirt. Or my painting coveralls. Or I could wear my Legoman Halloween costume. Or a sheet, with eye holes cut out. Or my baseball uniform. Endless possibilities really. And yet nothing … appropriate. Somebody should have taken me shopping. Of course that would have required foresight. Or, you know, sharing crucial information with me. But why would anybody do that? Right? “Clark, he’s not even sixteen. No need to act like he might understand ANYTHING. He’s just a child.” In other cultures I’d be considered an adult. I’d even be married by now. Probably to someone I’d never even met, but still, married! Surely on this continent I’m old enough to at least be told stuff.
It doesn’t really matter what I wear anyways. Nobody’s going to care. They’re not coming for me. I doubt anybody would even notice if I wasn’t there. And it’s not like I need to see all of them. You get to a certain point and people all look the same you know. I mean there’s variations in hair color and style and texture.
And sometimes they dress different. Like Sam. Sam’s this kid in my class. He always wears black pants and a black hoodie with these super worn out band t-shirts with people on them who are desperately in need of a hair cut ‘cause they’re like... boys but they have hair longer than my mom’s friend Ms. Fitzpatrick, and she’s got crazy long hair because she doesn’t believe a woman should have to um... “primp herself just for the purpose of attracting the attention of a lesser specimen of the human race just to gain social standing and acceptance of her peers by conforming to the antiquated patriarchal values of society”. Mom says Ms. Fitzpatrick will settle down when she doesn’t have to settle. She’s still single.
So, everybody in my class dresses the same except Sam. And Harpreet. Harpreet wears these long shirts, or short dresses (it’s really all about perspective isn’t it?) over like pajama bottoms in matching fabrics. I asked my mom why I can’t wear pajamas to class. She said it was a cultural thing. Because she’s a transplant, an alien. Not like green unidentified object alien, scooped up mashed potatoes and electric keyboard music type alien. Immigration type. And if you scooped her up from class, like if a real alien ship ripped the roof off the school and beamed her up and flew to where she was from and beamed her back down and plopped her in a school there, she’d fit right in. Like she’d be dressed just like everyone else there. But not Sam. Cause he’s like... from here. So even if they did that he’d be plopped down in exactly the same place. And he’d still look weird.
Anyways. They all start to look the same at some point. Like their emotions and stuff. The facial expressions are all the same.
I guess that’s why those cue cards for Autistic kids work. You know: Happy (he shows happy), Sad (he shows sad), perturbed (he shows perturbed), or pity. It’s all the same. Seen one, no point seeing more. Going to be like a marching band of pity. All carrying flowers instead of instruments. Which is just like, insultingly ironic. I mean, I know people talk about flowers dying and stuff, but I don’t think they actually really think about it. Dying. Like, living things actually dying and rotting and decomposing in a vase. It’s like if I killed someone, chopped their head off say, and left it on my dining room table to brighten the place up. I waited for him. He was supposed to pick me up from my baseball game, and he never came. Nobody came. They just left me there, at the park. Everybody else’s dad came and got them. My coach even asked if I needed a ride and I said no, my dad was coming. And it got dark and cold. And I was hungry. And he never came.
Maybe Sam will lend me something to wear. If an alien ship plopped him down in my house, he'd fit in today.
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