Dreary and Izzy

By Tara Beagan

1975, Lethbridge Alberta. When the Monoghan sisters lose their parents in a car accident, Deirdre remains as the sole caregiver to her older sister, Isabelle. Just as Deirdre is poised to enter university and begin exploring, for the first time, her own future and independence, she must choose how much of her own life she will sacrifice for the love of Isabelle. Deirdre is barely staying afloat under the strain of this reality when hope arrives in the form of gorgeous vacuum cleaner salesman Freddie Seven Horses. Both sisters find in Freddie a new world of unexplored emotions and ideas, where Freddie is a port in a storm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9780369102829

Tara Beagan

Tara Beagan is a proud Ntlaka’pamux and Irish “Canadian” halfbreed based in Calgary, Alberta. She is co-founder/director of ARTICLE 11 with her most cherished collaborator, Andy Moro. She served as the artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts from February 2011 to December 2013. A Dora Mavor Moore Award–winning playwright, she has been in residence at Cahoots Theatre, NEPA, the National Arts Centre, and Berton House. Five of her twenty plus plays have been published, and her first film script, 133 Skyway, co-written with Randy Redroad, won the imagineNATIVE award for best Canadian drama. Beagan is also a Dora and Betty Mitchell Award–​nominated actor.

Book preview

ACT ONE

August 1975. Lights up on the Monoghan home. There is a living room with a hide-a-bed in earth tones, a coffee table, and side tables. One side table holds a lamp, phone, phone book and address book, the other side table has a lamp and a paperback copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. ISABELLE’s room has a single bed, frilly with pink linens, a small white nightstand/ dresser with two drawers, a cup full of pencil crayons, a jewellery box [the kind with a ballerina inside] and a framed family photo. There are exits that lead to the kitchen, the bathroom, the basement and one that leads outside.

II. Deirdre and Isabelle

DEIRDRE Monoghan, Caucasian woman in her late twenties, enters the living room. She wears funeral blacks. She sheds her purse, car keys, and jacket and sits wearily on the couch. She puts her arms on an armrest and rests her head upon them. ISABELLE, also in funeral wear, stands silently behind DEIRDRE, near the doorway. She is holding a few pencil crayon drawings and a pencil case. She looks about for a time, and then finally speaks.

ISABELLE: Dreary.

ISABELLE waits for a response and then tiptoes toward DEIRDRE.

Dreary? You sleepin’?

DEIRDRE: No, Isabelle. I’m not sleeping. I just sat down, for God’s sake.

ISABELLE: I called you. (referring to the doorway) Back there.

DEIRDRE: What do you want, Izzy?

ISABELLE: Was wonderin’. Where Mom is? (read: Where’s Mom?)

DEIRDRE: Izzy, do you remember where we were? Just now? Before we got into the car to come home?

ISABELLE: Outside.

DEIRDRE: Where outside?

ISABELLE: The park.

DEIRDRE: No. Not the park. A cemetery. Do you remember when I told you that word? Cemetery?

ISABELLE: Cemetery. Cemetery?

DEIRDRE: Yes. Cemetery.

ISABELLE nearly lies by answering yes. She shakes her head instead.

ISABELLE: No.

DEIRDRE: Come here, Izzy, so you’re not staring at the back of my head.

ISABELLE walks around the side of the couch and remains standing.

Cemetery. A cemetery is a place where dead people are buried. They—their bodies—get buried in wooden boxes deep in the ground and that is where they stay. Do you remember this?

ISABELLE tries to remember, but admits she cannot, shaking her head again.

It’s okay, Isabelle. Listen. Mom and Dad are dead now. Today we went to their funeral, which is the opposite of a birthday except that everybody only gets one. Do you remember opposites?

ISABELLE: Yes! Opposite is exactly what the other thing isn’t. Happy/sad. Summer/Winter.

DEIRDRE: That’s right. Birthday party/funeral.

ISABELLE: Oh. (beat) Birthday parties are fun.

DEIRDRE: Yes. And so what is a funeral?

ISABELLE: (big breath, about to answer, exhale, big breath again) Bored. Fun/bored.

DEIRDRE: Um. Yeah. Bor-ing. Can we say boring?

ISABELLE: Yes. Boring. Like at church.

DEIRDRE: Yes! Which is why funerals are partly at a church. Remember?

ISABELLE: Um. Yes.

DEIRDRE: Sit down with me Izzy – you’re hovering.

ISABELLE sits down very close to DEIRDRE. DEIRDRE puts her arm around her, smiling at how endearing her sister is, in spite of her own fatigue.

We had a funeral for Mom and Dad because they died. That means we won’t see them anymore. Ever. Do you understand, Isabelle? Mom and Dad won’t be in our lives anymore. But their memories go on forever. We can remember them and tell stories about them and look at their pictures… but they won’t be here with us anymore. Do you remember any of