Class Exercise, during which we were given the opening:
Lights go black, chair extreme down left. A very tight spotlight comes up on it, from the side. A voice is heard…

From here, my hands began to write faster than I could think! This exercise opened my eyes to how creative you can be if you let your mind runaway with itself. Although the outcome was a monologue of a dark nature and tone, I felt I had written something that could really be developed in to something that could eventually be performed. Here’s what I came up with:

 

Lights go black, chair extreme down left. A very tight spotlight comes up on it, from the side. A voice is heard…

Lights go black, chair extreme down left. A very tight spotlight comes up on it, from the side. A voice is heard on stage as the lights go up on the chair.

 

Voice:

That’s where she sat. The last time I saw her, she was different.It was as if someone had removed any positivity from her thoughts. Through the reflection on her face, I could see what she could see. The bleak reality that things  weren’t about to get better any time soon. She turned to me and asked with her eyes wide, what can I do? How can I make this better?

The sound of flatlining continues throughout the rest of the speech, because of this, the voice struggles to be heard and is forced to strain the retelling of the story.

I hesitated. The worst thing I could have done. Because in that moment of hesitation, the reflection of my face, she  could see what I couldn’t see – a way out. A way to make it better, to make her better.

The voice stops.

Lighting change, up on to a figure, on a higher platform, blue light. Figure stands looking down as if ready to jump.

It was me who had to tell her parents. I was waiting at the hospital, with a mind in disarray. Was this my fault?

Mrs. Croft walked towards me, removing her gloves, cheeks pink from the cold outside or from running towards her daughter’s fate. I began to rehearse what to say in my head. Do I admit fault? Do I tell a mother that because of a slight moment’s hesitation from her daughter’s best friend, her precious baby girl took her own life? As she made her way through the ghostly hospital hall, she saw it reflected on my face. The despair or guilt, which one more prominent I am unsure.

What happened next, was not to be expected. As Mrs Croft registered my facial expression, what I saw reflected in her face, was not that of despair, bereavement or loss, but relief.
She sighed, stood still and in the softest sweetest voice, she says, – what a shame. She moved past me, redressing her cold hands in the gloves removed just moments ago, confusion clouded my vision as she added ‘I suppose it had to happen at some point’.

Rage is the only thing I remember next. They say their are seven stages of grief – for me, anger came first but in the most unexpected of ways.

Actor pulls out a book, titled ‘the seven stages of grief’

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 Texts Explored

Recover From Grief, (2014). 7 STAGES OF GRIEF. [online] Available at: http://www.recover-from-grief.com/7-stages-of-grief.html [Accessed 21 Feb. 2014].