Like A Virgin (2005)

Gordon Steele
No, you go. I don't feel up to it... I've got to live a bit. Maxine, I'm dying. I don't know why but I am. I
don't know why I've been picked to have such a shit-awful life. What have I done that's so bloody
wrong?
So you can piss off with your, 'Let's be jolly,' routine. With you, 'Lets pretend everything's alright and
we'll have a laugh like we used to in the old day's.'... Do you know something? I've never had sex. I'm
a virgin. Yeah I know what I said, what we said, but...well, they were just stories full of me, us trying
to be gorwn-up. But I'm never gonna grow up. I'll never grow up and be a woman and have children.
Why me? Why the fucking hell does it have to be me? It's not fair. How would you like it if someone
told you that you were gonna die? Come on, it's not easy is it? YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. You have got
four weeks to live. What are you going to do? It's not easy is it, is it, and people are so full of
understanding... so full of shit. 'I'd go on holiday, I'd travel.' What is the point in spending your time
in spending your time in strange lands with strange people? S you'll have lots of happy memories
and photographs to look back on. When? I haven't got time, I'm dying. What's the point in laying on
the beach getting a tan? So I'll look good in coffin. So people will be able to gork into my coffin
with...with..tear-stained eyes and say...'She looks really good'...'She's the best suntanned corpse I've
ever seen'... Well, they can all fuck off. Sometimes I feel as though I should have some dignity and
write poems and raise money for charity an' all that...Be a symbol for other people to look up to. But
why should I? What has anyone ever done for me? Look at you, you're pathetic stood there not
wanting to say anything in case you hurt my feelings. Making excuses for me. 'It's her condition... It's
understandable... She's just a bit down.' Well don't patronise me. Tell me to fuck off. Slap me. Go on.
Go on. Go on, do something.

Bus Stop (1955)

William Inge

Kennedys Children (1975)

Robert Patrick
CarlaI wanted to be a sex goddess. And you can laugh all you want to. The joke is on me, whether you
laugh or not. I wanted to be one -- one of them. They used to laugh at Marilyn when she said she
didn't want to be a sex-goddess, she wanted to be a human being. And now they laugh at me when I
say, "I don't want to be a human being; I want to be a sex-goddess." That shows you right there that
something has changed, doesn't it? Rita, Ava, Lana, Marlene, Marilyn -- I wanted to be one of them. I
remember the morning my friend came in and told us that Marilyn had died. And all the boys were
stunned, rigid, literally, as they realized what had left us. I mean, if the world couldn't support
Marilyn Monroe, then wasn't something desperately wrong? And we spent the rest of the
goddamned sixties finding out what it was. We were all living together, me and these three gay boys
that adopted me when I ran away, in this loft on East Fifth Street, before it became dropout heaven - before anyone ever said "dropout" -- way back when "commune" was still a verb? We were all -old-movie buffs, sex-mad -- you know, the early sixties. And then my friend, this sweet little queen,
he came in and he passed out tranquilizers to everyone, and told us all to sit down, and we thought
he was just going to tell us there was a Mae West double feature on somewhere -- and he said -- he
said -- "Marilyn Monroe died last" -- and all the boys were stunned -- but I -- I felt something sudden
and cold in my solar plexus, and I knew then what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be the
next one. I wanted to be the next one to stand radiant and perfected before the race of man, to
shed the luminosity of my beloved countenance over the struggles and aspirations of my pitiful
subjects. I wanted to give meaning to my own time, to be the unattainable luring love that drives
men on, the angle of light, the golden flower, the best of the universe made womankind, the living
sacrifice, the end! Shit!

Sister Mary Ignatious Explains it all for you (1979)

Christopher Durang
Diane
When I was sixteen my mother got breast cancer, which spread. I prayed to god to let her suffering
be small, but her suffering seemed to me quite extreme. She was in bad pain for half a year, and
then terrible pain for much of a full year. The ulcerations on her body were horrifying to her and to
me. Her last few weeks she slipped into a semiconscious state, which allowed her, unfortunately, to
wake up for a few minutes at a time and to have a full awareness of her pain and her fear of death.
She was able to recognize me, and she would try to cry, but she was unable to; and to speak, but she
was unable to. I think she wanted me to get her new doctors; she never really accepted that her
disease was going to kill her, and she thought in her panic that her doctors must be incompetent and
that new ones could magically cure her. Then, thank goodness, he went into a full coma. A nurse
who I knew to be Catholic assured me that everything would be done to keep her alive - a dubious
comfort. Happily, the doctor was not Catholic, or if he was, not doctrinaire, and they didn't use
extraordinary means to keep her alive; and she finally died after several more weeks in her coma.
Now there are, I'm sure, far worse deaths- terrible burnings, tortures, plague, pestilence, famine;
Christ on the cross even, as sister likes to say. But I thought my mother's death was hard enough,
and I got confused as to why I had been praying and to whom. I mean, if prayer was really this sort
of button you pressed- admit you need the Lord, then He stops the suffering- then why didn't it
always work? Of ever work? And when it worked so-called, and our prayers were supposedly
answered, wasn't it as likely to be chance as God? God always answers our prayers, you said, He just
sometimes says no. I became angry at myself , and by extension at you, for ever having expected
anything beyond randomness from the world. And while I was thinking these things, the day that my
mother died, I was raped. Now I know that's really too much, one really loses all sympathy for me
because I sound like I'm making it up or something. But bad things happen all at once, and this
particular day on my return from the hospital I was raped by some maniac who broke into the
house. He had a knife and cut me up some. Anyway, I don't want to really go into the experience,
but I got really depressed for about five years. Somehow the utter randomness of things- my
mother's suffering, my attack by a lunatic- this randomness seemed intolerable. I blamed myself of
course, for letting all of this get to me..... But now, I think it is childish to look for blame, part of the
randomness of things is that there is no one to blame; but basically I think everything is your fault
Sister.

Angels In America (1993)

Oleanna (premiered 1992)

David Mamet
CAROL: How can you deny it. You did it to me. Here. You did You confess. You love the Power. To
deviate. To invent, to transgress to transgress whatever norms have been established for us. And
you think its charming to question in yourself this taste to mock and destroy. But you should
question it. Professor. And you pick those things which you feel advance you: publication, tenure,
and the steps to get them you call harmless rituals. And you perform those steps. Although you
say it is hypocrisy. But to the aspirations of your students. Of hardworking students, who come here,
who slave to come here you have no idea what it cost me to come to this school you mock us.
You call education hazing, and from your so-protected, so-elitist seat you hold our confusion as a
joke, and our hopes and efforts with it. Then you sit there and say what have I done? And ask me
to understand that you have aspirations too. But I tell you. I tell you. That you are vile. And that you
are exploitative. And if you possess one ounce of that inner honesty you describe in your book, you
can look in yourself and see those things that I see. And you can find revulsion equal to my own.
Good day. (She prepares to leave the room.)
[ p28 ]

Carol: Why do you hate me? Because you think me wrong? No. Because I have, you think, power
over you. Listen to me. Listen to me, Professor (pause) It is the power that you hate. So deeply that,
that any atmosphere of free discussion is impossible. It s not unlikely. It's impossible. Isn't it? Now.
The thing which you find so cruel is the selfsame process of selection I, and my group, go through
every day of our lives. In admittance to school. In our tests, in our class rankings Is it unfair? I can't
tell you. But, if it is fair. Or even if it is unfortunate but necessary for us, then, by God, so must it be
for you. (pause) You write of your responsibility to the young. Treat us with respect, and that will
show you your responsibility. You write that education is just hazing. (pause) But we worked to get
to this school. (pause) And some of us. (pause) Overcame prejudices. Economic, sexual, you cannot
begin to imagine. And endured humiliations I pray that you and those you love never will encounter.
(pause) To gain admittance here. To pursue that same dream of security you pursue. We, who, who
are, at any moment, in danger of being deprived of it. By the administration. By the teachers. By you.
By, say, one low grade, that keeps us out of graduate school; by one, say, one capricious or inventive
answer on our parts, which, perhaps, you don t find amusing. Now you know, do you see? What it is
to be subject to that power. Who do you think I am? To come here and be taken in by a smile. You
little yapping fool. You think I want revenge. I don t want revenge. I WANT UNDERSTANDING.

scene 3.
CAROL: As full well they should. You dont understand? Youre angry? What has led you to this
place? Not your sex. Not your race. Not your class. YOUR OWN ACTIONS. And youre angry. You ask
me here. What do you want? You want to charm me. You want to convince me. You want me to
recant. I will not recant. Why should I? What I say is right. You tell me, you are going to tell me that
you have a wife and child. You are going to say that you have a career and that youve worked for
twenty years for this. Do you know what youve worked for? Power. For power. Do you understand?
And you sit there, and you tell me stories. About your house, about all the private schools, and about
privilege, and how you entitled. To buy, to spend, to mock, to summon. All your stories. All your silly
weak guilt, its all about privilege; and you wont know it. Dont you see? You worked twenty years
for the right to insult me. And you feel entitled to be paid for it. Your Home. Your Wife Your sweet
deposit on your house

Cigarettes and Chocolate (1988)

Anthony Minghella
Gemma
When you stop speaking, its like stopping eating. The first day
theres something thrilling, and new, before the pain begins. The
pain where you want to give up, where you can think of nothing
else.
Then the second day, you feel wretched, the third delirious, and
then suddenly theres no appetite, it shrinks, it shrinks, until the
prospect of speaking, the thought of words retching from the
mouth, how ugly and gross it seems.
Nothing changes.
How to stop people in their tracks, and make them think. Only if
youre starving, if its your son lying in your arms, or you think he
might be in that discarded pile of mutilated bodies, or theres no
milk in your breast and the babys crying, or the radiation is leaking
into your childs lungs, or the lead or the nitrates or the, or the, or
the and all the while skirts get longer, skirts get shorter, skirts get
longer, skirts get shorter, poetry is written, the news is read, I buy
a different butter at the store and have my hair permed,
straightened, coloured, cut, lengthened, all the while my hair keeps
growing, I throw away all my skirts, a black bag to Oxfam, lately
Ive been at Oxfam buying back my skirts, Ive stripped the pine
and painted the pine, pulled out the fireplaces and put them back
in, Im on the pill, Im off the pill, Im on the pill, Im off the pill. Im
listening to jazz, swing, jazz, swing, Im getting my posters framed.
Im telling my womens group everything. Im protesting. Im
protesting. Ive covered my wall with postcards, with posters, with
postcards, with posters. No this. Out them. In these. Yes those. No
this. Out them. In these. Yes those. The rows. The rows with my
friends, my lovers. What were they about? What did they change?
The fact is, the facts are, nothing is changed. Nothing has been
done. There is neither rhyme nor reason, just tears, tears, peoples
pain, peoples rage, their aggression. And silence.

Junk (adapted for the stage) (1999)

John Retellack/ Melvin Burgress

The madness of Esme and Shaz (1994)

Grace Notes (1999ish)

Rachel Rubin Ladukte
Page 45 Emily -

GN Page 46 Catherine

GN Page 86 Samantha (cut Eriks lines)