5 Best Things You Can Do Monologues

Things You Can Do (Clara)

Category: Play Role: Clara From: Things You Can Do

Clara says

Things you can do…

Bake cookies — healthy ones. No trans fats, whole grains, honey, no refined sugars.

You can make lists. Carry a notebook. When you can’t keep track you can write down what bothers you. Contain it. You can create a schedule. Fill it in with places to be — with meaningful places. Work. Activities. Meetings. Anything to get out of the house.

Anything to get your mind off it for an hour. For a second you can hold your breath. You can hold your heart still let it pass let it pass.

You can get a routine. You can forget where you are. Forget what you are doing.

You can do what everyone says and not ever think of what you want.

You can tell your doctor that you cannot sleep and your doctor will prescribe something that no one should be ashamed of needing these days. Some help. Sometimes everyone needs a little help.

You can continue.

You can.

And it will never be the same.

You’ll adapt.

Probably.

Things You Can Do (Fiona)

Category: Play Role: Fiona From: Things You Can Do

Fiona says

You’re not just anything. None of us are — my boy — my boy talks the same way — as if he doesn’t matter. As if they gave up. I didn’t raise him that way — he talks about TV. He talks about TV all the time — I don’t know what to say to him.

You don’t get it — back in the days before satellite defense systems, before ‘trickle down,’ in the days before the strip malls, in the days before fleece active wear — we thought we could change things — I felt like I mattered. I felt like I belonged — really belonged to something bigger than myself —

And since then I’ve spent all this time playing their rules and gathering with the other concerned citizens and writing letters and attending the hearings and the marches and you know — I know you know — it doesn’t matter. We say — wait! Stop! How about the park? How about the wild spaces? the air, the water, the children — We need to preserve those — those are important too. And they say ‘thanks, that’s nice, you’re right, we should’ and they bull-doze it. And now I’m out of time. But you aren’t. You are not. You.

Things You Can Do (Fletcher)

Category: Play Role: Fletcher From: Things You Can Do

Fletcher says

Awww — she gets high. I know all the kids in this and the five surrounding counties that like to alter their reality through various chemical reactions — Now, I don’t know the ones who do it through starvation, binging & purging, hypochondria, cutting, compulsive exercise, plastic surgery, fashion, shopping, over-achieving, reckless sex (unless they are high) or internet addiction. I’m familiar with some conspiracy theorists and I relate, but that’s not really my bag — vegans, dieters, acupuncture, hmmmm piercers, S&M, umm LARPers, gamers, clique obsessed schemers, twelve-steppers, workaholics, perfectionists, therapy junkies, religiosity of any stripe, oh and like anybody into getting shit or pissed on — I don’t know about that.

Things You Can Do (Stevie)

Category: Play Role: Stevie From: Things You Can Do

Stevie says

Here. The way the earth is going to change — the climates — microclimates — water scarcities and floods — new lakes, rivers, streams — running unfrozen — all into free flow — all will be in free flow and maybe it will take so long for it to happen but so long to us is nothing compared to geological time — like nothing — so I don’t know why people find that reassuring. I don’t know why any one finds anything reassuring. Except maybe they think they will be dead. But what about us? And what about our kids?

And you know when you are buried in the ground and that ground goes underwater that water will sink in and long fingered unloose your corpse — and bloated you, full of rotty rotty water, you will taint all you are in contact with and you’ll still be contributing to the mess that your grand children will be dying from.

Better after all to burn.

Things You Can Do (Stevie)

Category: Play Role: Stevie From: Things You Can Do

Stevie says

The Cryosphere refers to the portions of the earth’s surface where water is in a solid form — sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets and frozen ground, like permafrost, like in Canada and Siberia where the ground never thaws or we thought it would never thaw…The cryosphere effects all aspects of the global climate system, primarily through its interaction with other elements. It is changing radically throughout the world. The river here is ice — partly ice. It is part of the cryosphere. It’s the part that I study — the thickness, depth, the wind patterns frozen in water. I thought it would hold me. It looked like it would hold me. Anyways. It’s not the first time I fell through…

There was the blankness of snow extending into forever. There was the comfort of work, of routines and rituals. There was a sense of purpose, a sense of importance, a sense that I couldn’t work fast enough — that I couldn’t hold on to anything — and then — then — I —

Then the ice broke.