One: Monologues for Young Performers

By Chris Dickins

Meet Adam – it’s his fault whenever his football team loses, Angelina who sabotages her ballet classmates, Billy who can’t sit still, Dora who has decided it’s time to fall in love, Kathy who knows her own mind when it comes to fashion, Alice who starts a campaign to save the apricot tree in her backyard and Armellieery who has friends named ‘Palooma, Cheetah and Paisleee with three e’s’. These are a few of the characters who appear in One – a book of monologues for young performers.

There are 81 solos in One. They are sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes magical and sometimes daring – each with something different to offer young people looking for dramatic content that is relevant, engaging and challenging. These performers may be studying Drama at secondary Colleges, university Performing Arts courses, Youth Theatre companies or preparing for eisteddfods and community events.

The monologues here will also appeal to teachers of theatre and drama and prove useful in classes based on character and voice development, the use of dramatic elements and stagecraft, use of space, actor-audience relationships and the study of important theatrical theorists. These works will reward ‘digging’ beneath the surface to discover suggested or hidden meaning. One may also appeal to more mature readers and those with a love of theatre.

Chris Dickins is a playwright, theatre director and teacher who has been working in the Performing Arts since 1973. He is a prolific playwright having written around 90 plays – many of which have been specially commissioned for small community companies. Chris’ plays have been produced across Australia and Internationally; been studied for VCA Drama courses; used as teaching resources at universities and at NIDA and have been nominated for Victorian Green Room awards. In 1993 Chris represented Australia at the five writers from five Nations ASSITEJ international congress (the children’s theatre branch of UNESCO) in Frankfurt, Germany where his theories on theatre were adopted into ASSITEJ archives. Chris shares his life with wife Christine and lives in the rural artisan village of Fish Creek, Victoria, Australia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398423855

Book preview

About the Author

Chris Dickins is a writer and theatre director who lives in rural Victoria, Australia. He has written over 100 plays and many of these have been performed across Australia. A couple have been performed internationally. Chris was the Australian writer at the 1993 ASSITEJ Five Writers from Five Nations conference held in Frankfurt, Germany. Chris has taught drama and theatre in Australian schools and universities for 40 years and has recently written several novels. He is married to theatre director and actor, Christine Skicko, and has one son, Tom, who is a musician and festival director.

Dedication

For Christine, Tom and Ange

Copyright Information ©

Chris Dickins 2024

The right of Chris Dickins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398423848 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398423855 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Deepest thanks to the Australian theatre community and all those directors, actors, producers who have helped me throughout my career. Special thanks to the great teachers who have gone before: Peter Tulloch, Geoffrey Milne, Russell Beedles. Thanks to all the actors who have been in my plays and been tireless in their generosity.

Dear Reader

These monologues have been specifically written to be performed by young actors. These performers may be studying drama at secondary colleges, university courses, youth theatre companies or preparing for eisteddfods and community events. I hope they might appeal to theatre lovers of all ages as well.

I have sought to write pieces that offer young people a wide variety of characters, a mix of comedic and dramatic possibilities, engaging language and a variety of social settings. I hope these monologues will reward those young actors who like to develop theatre that resonates with audiences, entertains them, challenges them and reflects our modern world.

I also hope that these solos will be appealing to teachers of theatre and drama and prove useful in classes based on character and voice development, the use of dramatic elements and stagecraft, use of space, actor-audience relationships and the study of important theatrical theorists.

These works, like all my plays, might require ‘digging’ beneath the surface to discover suggested or hidden meaning. I wish anyone using these monologues the very best. I would love hearing about their use, answering any questions, or offering advice, and include this email address to facilitate communication: [e-mail].

Chris Dickins

Note: The genders assigned to the solos could easily be reversed and the solos would suit performances by actors who do not identify in a binary manner.

Abby, the Pirate

Abby, the Pirate

Abby: Ah, my hearties. There are two types of pirates. One is fierce. And cruel. And heartless. This type of pirate curses all day long. They would sell their brothers or sisters to the highest bidder without a moment’s hesitation. This type of pirate keelhauls their own parents for cooking vegetables and makes their grandparents walk the plank for being too old. This first pirate staples the wings of butterflies together, takes blankets off the homeless and claps charity workers in irons and sends them to Davy Jones below. Yes, this is one type of pirate. And then, there is another type of pirate. The mean ones. I am one of these.

I’m waiting here at the bottom of the hill. Armed to the teeth. I’ve got a blunderbuss, three razor sharp swords, a curved dagger, a bottle of poison, a vicious dog, an aggressive spider and a pair of red-hot chillies. I am waiting for Benny Spencer to come prancing down the street. He might have Carter Richards with him. Fine. Bring it on. One dead blaggard’s no different to two dead blaggards.

What’s a pirate to do?

I was sitting near the canteen counting my pieces of eight. I was minding my own business. I wasn’t terrifying anyone. Not even the fourth graders. Or the newcomers. I was in a fine frame of mind. When along comes Mr Benny Spencer – Club Captain of The Black Buccaneers. What does he do? He orders me to move on because I’m sitting where he wants to hold his meeting. I tell him to move on, he’s spoiling the view. The next thing I look up and he’s standing right on top of me, with several of his motley crew.

Well, the insults pile up. First, I smell. Second, I’m dumb. Then the heavy stuff. I’m a bum. Well, there’s no way out of this. It’s time to let out the pirate. I tell Jeff his mum’s part wombat and he runs off. I tell Leon he’s a sook and I kick him in the shins and he goes ‘sooking’ off. Then I look Benny right in the eye and I say, You’re a lily-livered, scabby, sea bass. The Black Buccaneers go right ‘off their nellies’ when I say that.

And that’s when my life came to an end. We had a fight and I gave as good as I got but some buccaneers held me down and Benny sat on top of me. The scurvy gang all cheered as Benny told them I was yellow-bellied. That I was a hornswoggle and a low-down land lubber. I’m not sure what a hornswoggle is but I’m pretty sure I’m not one. And then he said, as if it was the worst thing of all, She’s a girl! It all went quiet before I kicked him so hard he went flapping around the schoolyard like a chook without a head.

And here I am. Armed to the teeth. Mad enough to chew nails. And here he comes. He’s so sure of himself. Strutting down the road like a Pirate King. Little does he know. He’s merely a pirate of the first type. He’s about to meet a pirate of a totally different dimension. Yo Ho Ho!

A Boy and His Belly

A Boy and His Belly

Benton: See how I’m holding my books? It’s because my belly is behind them. My belly is so big. It’s like having a koala baby holding onto me. It gets to places minutes before I do. My mum says when you’re born, a doctor comes along and checks all the belly buttons. He says, You’re done, you’re done, you’re done, as he touches the bellies. He probably tapped at mine and said, You’re overdone. When I learnt to crawl, I went backwards because there was this big thing in the way. When Mum got pregnant again, I thought I was pregnant too.

My brothers are all skinny. My sister’s skinny. Mum looks all right. Dad’s got this huge lump on the front of his body. He looks like he’s swallowed a couch. It just keeps on getting bigger. When he watches the tele, he rests his beer and chips on it. All his mates are the same. When they’re all in the same room, they look like the basketball storeroom at school. When one of them wants to turn around, they all have to turn around. I’m worried. If I grow up and have to drink beer, there won’t be room for any friends.

My grandma gives me lots of treats when I stay at her house. I like the tubs of ice cream the best. And the jars of peanut butter. Blue cream cakes. She must have shares in a potato chip factory. But she’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni. My other nan doesn’t give me much. So after a while at her house, I go down to MacDonald’s and make up for lost time.

When I started school, a boy asked if he could stick a pin in me to see if I flew around the room like a balloon. I was called The Blimp and I wasn’t allowed to play kiss chasey. Some teachers made me run around the oval two times more than anyone else. The canteen wouldn’t serve me. At home, my parents put locks on the cupboards and the fridge. Things had to change.

I went to a nutritionist. She took down the details of my eating habits and went through a couple of pens. I’m on a new diet. Basically, it’s mainly nuts and seeds and some disgusting soup. Dad says it’s bunny food. I guess it is. How many fat rabbits have you seen? The food is so good for me I’m going to die of boredom. I go to sleep hungry. I dream of cakes and burgers and chips and fizzy drinks. I wake up hungry and I go to the kitchen and look at my bowl of grains and I don’t want to eat at all. I stand on the scales with one leg in the air so I’ll weigh less. When I see a shop window, I suck my stomach in and look at how slim my reflection is.

I run each morning and night. I use Dad’s exercise bike in the garage. It didn’t work for ages till I got rid of the rust and gave it some oil. I’ve been doing jazz ballet with my sister and Pilates with my grand aunt who’s now called Salabhasana, instead of June. And guess what? I’m still huge. I pretend I’m getting skinny, but I’m not. The only skinny bits are my arms and legs. They look like Pick Up Sticks. I’ve got fat shoulders now and there are purple marks everywhere. Even my underarms have put on weight.

My muscles are smaller, but I don’t mind. Nothing much has changed. Now I’m just a whacking big lump called Blimp who will never be on the right side of a hamburger again.

And now, I’m back from the hospital after all the trials.

They think I might have something called Cushing’s Syndrome. Or a tumour. Great. I wonder if they’ll give me a sign I can wear around my neck. ‘I’m fat but I can’t help it’. Or ‘I’d Be Thin Like You If I Didn’t Have A Disease’.

Dad drove me through MacDonald’s on the way home. He ordered up big and then said I could have anything I wanted. I thought about it. I nearly asked for everything they were selling, just to get back at the world. Then I wondered if they sold bags of nuts and seeds washed down with a bracing mineral water. Anything I wanted? I thought, ’Make me like everyone else at school.’ But in my mind, I could see my classroom and maybe a third, maybe a half were starting to look like me. What will it be, Benton? Dad said, as he swallowed a fistful of chips.

Anything? I said.

Anything, Dad mumbled, as he took half of his burger out in just one bite.

I want them to stop calling me Blimp.

Adam’s Fault

Adam’s Fault

Adam: Dear Australia, it’s my fault when the captain goes out in a test match. I try not to watch. I sneak across the lounge room with my headphones on and my fingers crossed. I don’t know what makes me do it. I look up at the television and his stumps are all over the place. The umpire puts his finger in the air. And I see the score. He was on 99. My dad stares at me in disbelief. I don’t come out of my room till after stumps. Dad still stares at me in disbelief.

It’s the same with football. I have to stare at the floor while they have a shot at goal. I did it all season and my team made it to the preliminary final for the first time in memory. I had never seen my team in a preliminary final. Dad told me I had to watch. I put on my scarf and my beanie and we shared hot dogs and some chips that Dad made. He’s such a bad cook he even mucked those up. I was so excited. Most of the experts on tele picked my team. The siren went. The whistle went. The umpire bounced the ball and our ruckman tapped the ball and that’s the last we saw of it. At half time, our side hadn’t scored. At half time, I had a couple of cold chips and went for a walk.

Whoever I pick in the tennis loses. My Melbourne Cup horse runs the wrong way. At school, I beg our basketball coach not to let me call the toss. You might think this is all pretty bad. But it’s getting worse. Mum had a lucky Lotto ticket. She was sure she was going to win. She could feel it in her bones. But she made me find the results in the paper. I had to circle her numbers in the results. I circled number one. Once.

Dad asked me to wish him luck for the Golf Tournament. He always plays well so it was easy to wish him luck. But then, he wanted me to watch him play. I shook my head. I said I had a cold and sneezed to prove it. I said my leg was playing up, as I limped to the door following him and his set of clubs. That’s when he picked me up and carried me to the car.

On the way to the golf course, I told Dad about a poem we read at school. It was all about sailors and an albatross. The albatross comes every morning and the sailors have good luck. But one sailor shoots the bird. The ship’s luck changes. Everything goes wrong. The wind doesn’t come. The ship is stuck. They run out of water. They hang the albatross around the shooter’s neck because he brings bad luck. I’m not sure Dad is listening till I tell him I’m the albatross. He stops the car. He tells me I’m being foolish. No one brings bad luck. A boy in Australia can’t make a cricket captain go out in England. A boy watching television can’t make a footballer miss the goals. We all feel that way sometimes. It’s because what we hope for doesn’t happen. Our dreams sometimes go sour. That’s just life.

I feel a bit better as I settle into the crowd. On the first tee, Dad looks at me and winks. Go, Dad, I say and he swings back and slams his brand-new driver into the back of his foot. It’s not me, I say to myself. It’s just life. Dad goes for par on the first green. His ball is that awkward distance between a long and a short putt. He looks for me in the crowd and smiles. He takes ages, measuring the distance in his mind, practicing the shot, taking a deep breath. He putts. The ball slides across the green and into the hole. And out again. I have a sinking feeling that it’s my fault.

On the third fairway, his ball flies into a lake. On the fourth, he takes fourteen strokes to get the ball out of the sand. On the fifth, he tells a spectator to stop whispering while he’s putting. By the end of the first nine holes, he has blamed his back, the angle of the sun, pressures at work and accused his best friend Ian of cheating. Me? I’m in the crowd with my hands over my eyes and a stinking dead albatross around my shoulders.

On the 12th fairway, Dad is so shot that everyone looks away as he gets ready to drive. I can see him shaking. So I say, You’ll do it, Dad. You’re the best. Dad doesn’t look at me. He swings and my God that ball goes on forever. He has to call out ‘Fore’ because the players ahead of him might get hit. The ball lands on the green and rolls towards the hole. People in the crowd sigh and applaud. When we get to the green, Dad can’t believe how close his ball is to the flag. He says, Do you think I can do it?

I say yes. A couple of people in the crowd say yes. The 12th is a par five. Dad says, I know what a birdie is, I know what an eagle is, but what’s it called if I get this? Ian pats my dad on the shoulder and he says, It’s called an albatross. Dad looks at me and winks. He sinks it. No one at the club has ever hit an albatross. And I was there to see it.

Alvina’s Fairy Bower

Alvina’s Fairy Bower

Alvina: Someone’s been here. To my fairy door. Look, my things are everywhere. All my shiny buttons, my ribbons, my tinsel box. My pieces of glass and my paperclips. Who could have done such a thing? My guess is Liam. I hear his thoughts in the wind. He thinks I’m the favourite one. He hates it when Dad calls me princess.

Oh look, my feather collection. And my crystals. Why does he hate me so much? It wasn’t me who made Mum go away. Maybe I can make his worries go away. There must be a spell. Oh no, maybe he has found my spell