MONOLOGUES of a ONE-EYED ADOLESCENT

Laugh, frown, get down, wake up and say Amen! to a one-man performance on growing up long-haired, short-winded, one-eyed, two-fisted, bar-mitzvahd & unassisted in the finest suburbs from Boston to Miami!

Merlyn’s Pen founder R. James Stahl writes and performs an evening of monologues for teachers, librarians, parents, literary types, and friends. Information at 1-800-247-2027 or email merlyn@merlynspen.org (subject: Monologues) for bookings. Read excerpts from the performance monologues, below.

Audience writing activities follow the performance for those eager to begin their own stories.

HUMOR! from the monologue GOODBYE, EYE!

“In those days of worry, everyone cried but me. My father flew down to Miami from Boston and cried in front of my friend Elliot, who cried. My dad’s father, who carried a Yiddish newspaper and offered to have his eye removed so that I might receive it, he cried. My bigwig grandfather in Washington, who said he’d send for the President’s personal physician if we asked, he cried. My mother, who rushed to the emergency room from a beauty parlor, she cried. My sister, a social worker who came from Brighton to sleep in a chair next to my hospital bed, she cried. Even my older brother, 16, who hated it when I hung out with his friends, cried. The only person who didn’t cry was my father’s second wife, Annie, who checked into a New York clinic for her second nose job.”

 

SUSPENSE! from the monologue MY DYNAMITE

“I’d made the bomb from an M-80 and a scale model of the Saturn V rocket. That’s the one that took three Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon. The model had arrived in the mail the month before, a 13th birthday gift from my dad. The M-80s came in a brown paper bag, the small type used in a candy store. I received them from a friend of my older brother. Four M-80s have the same force as a stick of dynamite, so I had basically taped a quarter-stick of dynamite to the inside of a toy. I lit the fuse and waited to see what would happen next. The sparkle and color looked and felt like confetti blown from a straw.”  

ACTION! from PINKEYE AND A PUNCH IN THE NOSE

“The fight was fair. My jabs surprised him, the way I kept my hands high, and I saw him change his stance to match mine. This kid wasn’t flailing his arms, like most seventh-graders would. But after a few punches from each of us failed to connect, we began to feel we had more in common with each other than with the kids in the circle egging us on. We put our fists down before anyone got hurt--and before the teachers arrived. A few days later, we were buying Slurpees together and joking about brain freeze at the Seven-Eleven near my house.”

WHATEVER! from I CHASED A THIEF THROUGH CHICAGO
"He jumped a metal barrier between one parking lot and another, so I had to jump it too, on a run. I thought of all the men who had jumped before me, TV cops with names like MacGyver, Elia Kuriakin in The Man from UNCLE, Rockford in The Rockford Files, and Mannix. Well-groomed men with unusual names. Waist high, the barrier required planting one hand on the metal top before launching both legs over, sideways, like chopsticks still in the wrapper."

 

Call 1-800-247-2027 or email merlyn@merlynspen.org  (subject heading: Monologues) to discuss booking. More about R. James Stahl.