Here is a monologue I wrote for the play “Reach.” Tell me what you think? This monologue ends the short one-act.
“It’s freezing here. I made decisions that I wasn’t proud of. Did things that I regret. But after the guilt and the sorrow melt away, I’m left with a glass full of memories. I’ve been pondering on what the most powerful elements that we possess turn out to be. I’m focused on one in particular. And this is doubt. People doubted me. When I was down, people threw the stones, kicked me in the ribs, left me in rags. But when I was up, they threw roses, put out the red carpet and gave me more influence than I could ever ask for. The ghosts of those times are nigh. I sit out here on the rink where it happened to go over it all. Trying, still, to decipher the meaning. Themes pass by on skates, leaving etches in the ice. Yet, after all is said and done…what do we really have left but the soulful march of a thousand experiences marked across the sky like crystalline stars, shimmering in the moonlit darkness? Joan and Louis were there for me during this trying time. Louis tried telling me that guilt wasn’t alive. Joan taught me it was everywhere. I suppose I’m the unhappy medium. Lost in the galaxy of doubt, where everything looks the same, but turns out to be nothing more than gas. I look back at all I’ve done, and I’m left with so many questions. I can’t imagine a world without them. But where are the answers? Where have they gone off to?
(Pause.)
Here they are. Beneath the ice. Below what we believe and what we remember. It’s all there…we just have to wait until the ice melts. Until we skate enough to wear out the hardness. Make things less…vulcanized. We have to be prone to being brittle. We’re not all hockey pucks. One day, we just have to shatter.”
Hi Alex – Ok, so the resolution is that you write and we critique right?
So I think it is very pretty and very well written (all of your stuff is). I don’t think I really have a good idea of what is going on in the scene or whatever so I can’t really give you a complete review, but here is what I think about it.
I really like where you are going with it, I like the point it makes.
It’s so true that doubt can be the downfall of people.
If I were to say something “constructive” about it I would just say that it has too much symbolism. I mean, the character compares himself (herself, I don’t think it is ever gender specific) to a lot of different things – a glass, the galaxy, the rink…..
I really like the “hockey” metaphor and I think you should run with that, but the glass and the galaxy sort of throws the smoothness of the “hockey” metaphor off a little bit.
Other than that, I wish I could read the rest of it because it is beautiful!!!
I miss reading the stuff you write, and having you read my stuff.
I started a new novel (my last one stopped going places after chapter 5, so I cut it off for a while) and I wish I had your input like I used to! It was so fun to sit in the little student lounge of NPC watching Roseanne and talking and reading our stuff and trying to catch up on our last minute homework and line memorization.