Dressing Amelia

By Chloë Whitehorn

Drama, 3F 1M
A daughter struggles to reconcile the past she thought she knew with a wardrobe full of roles to try on. Upstairs Amelia is still angry with her mother and refuses to leave her childhood room because she doesn't have anything appropriate to wear. Downstairs her grandmother is entertaining the guests who have arrived for the wake.
Amelia's missed some things over the years, including her mom’s questionable relationship with her high school neighbor. In a dizzying journey of crayons, circus acts and lavender martinis, Dressing Amelia is a lovingly penned letter for the mothers and daughters seeking to connect through states of mania and inherited trauma. Sometimes it's just a dress and sometimes it's so much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chloë Whitehorn
• Release date: Jul 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735335711

Chloë Whitehorn

Described as "Dorothy Parker meets Neil Labute", Chloë Whitehorn is a playwright, underwater photographer, and aspiring novelist. A graduate of the theatre program at Queen's University (in Canada), Chloë’s plays often examines taboo moralities, tragic love, and the licentious desires and imaginative reasoning of human beings, and have played across North America and the UK. An anthology of her plays about tragic love is published as "Divine Wrecks and other morally questionable tragedies".

Book preview

First published in 2020 by Queen Mab Books

Dressing Amelia is copyright © 2020 by Chloe Whitehorn. All rights reserved. This material is fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Copyright Union and is subject to royalties. All rights to stage, produce, film, record, in whole or in part, in any medium, or in any language, by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by the author and application for performance etc should be made to the author before commencement of rehearsal. No performance may be given unless a license has been obtained, and alterations to the title or text of the play are expressly forbidden without written consent of the author.

Production inquiries should be addressed to: [e-mail] or by visiting www.chloewhitehorn.com

Library and Archives Cataloging in Publication

Whitehorn, Chloe, author

Dressing Amelia / Chloe Whitehorn

Issued in electronic format.

For my mother. Thank you for the adventure that was being your daughter.

Your love was worth everything.

Cast of Characters

AMELIA 27-year-old female, grieving but conflicted

GRANDMA 70-something female, caring but stern

THOMAS mid-twenties male

GRACE 23-year-old female in appearance, quirky

DRESSING AMELIA

Amelia's bedroom at the top of a stairwell. Formally a girl's room (inhabited by books, toys and a bed) that has been re-purposed as storage space for a variety of household items. A box wrapped in Christmas paper is on the bed.

Amelia, a 27-year-old woman, enters carrying a suitcase. She pauses at the entry to the room, surveying a place full of memories. She has not been crying. Amelia sets down her suitcase and steps forward, stepping on bunny.

Amelia picks up bunny and walks to the bed where she spots the present. She checks the tag and begins to unwrap it. Inside is a pair of footed pajamas.

AMELIA: What am I? Eleven?

Amelia puts on the pajamas.

GRANDMA enters.

GRANDMA: What are you wearing?

AMELIA: Footy pajamas.

GRANDMA: You can’t wear that.

AMELIA: Why not?

GRANDMA: You are a twenty-eight year-old--

AMELIA: Twenty-seven.

GRANDMA: Twenty-seven year-old woman. Adult. Adults do not wear... Get dressed in something appropriate.

AMELIA: I don’t have anything else.

GRANDMA: You brought a suitcase full of clothes.

AMELIA: No one told me what to pack. No one told me I needed to bring something... appropriate.

GRANDMA: Amelia, anything you have in there would be better.

AMELIA: You’d be surprised.

GRANDMA: There are people coming over. You cannot come downstairs like that. What would they think?

AMELIA: That I look really comfortable.

GRANDMA: Amelia.

AMELIA: That I’m starting a new trend. Or that NO ONE TOLD ME I needed to pack something appropriate.

GRANDMA: Amelia please. You’re being ridiculous

Grandma opens Amelia’s suitcase and roots through it.

AMELIA: Oh don’t go through that.

GRANDMA: Here.