Two monologues, recited within The Finn-Brit Players' production Poetry and Not Jazz – Resurrection:
The last soul in the shop
He is armed with a foul mind and a sharp tongue. He is determined and will not let minor things like decency and ethics stand in his way. He has a box.
This character is unpleasant, to say the least. It wasn’t easy to write and is even harder to inhabit on stage. I struggled a lot with the impulse to tone his nastiness down, but… it just didn’t feel true any other way. The scariest part is that he is not just a caricature of a certain culture, a culture we all have the misfortune to encounter now and again, but he is also based on some of the darkest emotions that arise. The ones that I desperately try denying I have…
So, this character is both very foreign, and a bit too close to home. He is unsettling. He is the kind to spur too many questions and too few answers. How are we going to deal with him? What made him be like this? What is in the box?
Make Idiots Great Again
Dealing with modern fears is not easy, especially if you possess one of those anxious minds, prone to charge into rumination like a battle elephant with a grudge on the world. The best way out of this fix that I’ve found is to treat your mind a bit like a… like a little kid. Distract it with a good toy (a game does wonders here), or tell it a good story to soothe its tantrum.
This monologue is about one of the stories I tell my elephant when it’s gripped by the fear of looking or feeling stupid. And since my elephant is quite intellectually vain, this fear tends to grow out of control very quickly. So, the situation is serious…
Thankfully, the story works like a charm, and not only to turn the elephant back into my friend, but also to restore idiots to their deserved position of greatness. Not bad, hah?
Additional credits:
The first image is originally from The Finn-Brit Players' webpage for the production.