A Short One-Act Play Concerning a Dream That I Had Last Night

For my theater class, we had to write a "play" of a dream that we had that week. So I did that.


ACT I
Scene 1
(LIGHTS UP. A bedroom. ROSE, early 20s, sits on a bed. She leans over a wire hamster cage sitting beside her. The hamster jumps on a large, green seed to one side of the cage. ERIN, Rose's younger sister, sits on the bed, watching the rodent.)

ERIN: Y'know, I have a wheel from before… like, a small one. Like, for small hamsters... You could have it.

(Rose gives Erin a nasty look. Erin pulls a hamster wheel out from under the bed. It is rusty, encrusted with dirt and old woodchip shavings. Rose just stares at Erin. LIGHTS DOWN.)


Scene 2
(LIGHTS UP. A kitchen. Counters and cabinets but no walls. The room is not clearly defined, hazy, translucent, filled with fog. Erin rustles through various cabinets. She talks into a tape-recorder. She pulls a container of dish-soap out from under the sink. She holds the container up to the light; shakes it. It is almost empty. Erin sets the container on the kitchen table, besides the decrepit hamster wheel. She continues circling around the kitchen, searching, and talking into the tape-recorder. Loud voices emerge from beyond, from within the fog, obscuring Erin's recording. She shuts off the tape-recorder, putting it on the table. Erin pulls a jar off the top of the refrigerator. She untwists the cap, looks inside. She sets the jar beside the container on the table and fetches a spoon. Erin pours the contents of the jar into the container of dish soap and stirs them together. She takes a taste. THE STATE, a comedy troupe, enters. A MEMBER OF THE STATE picks up the now-empty jar: apple sauce. He waggles his eyebrows at Erin, who keeps eating her concoction. She shrugs. The State member beckons at a female troupe member.)

STATE MEMBER: Hey Shannon!

(The female troupe member, SHANNON, walks over. Her male coworker looks at the dish-soap container and then waggles his eyebrows at her. Erin hands him the container. He suggestively gestures it towards Shannon. She shakes her head and turns away.)

STATE MEMBER (singing): I love you, Shannon...

(OTHER MEMBERS of the comedy troupe walk over from beyond the fog.)

OTHER MEMBER (singing, falsetto): I love you, Shannon...

STATE MEMBER: I love you, Shannon...

OTHER MEMBER: Shannon, I love you, too...

(The troupe members laugh and congratulate themselves. Shannon walks away to the other end of the table.)

ERIN: Hey... what's that song, the original song?

STATE MEMBER: "I Love You Janet."

ERIN: Oh, yeah... right.

(LIGHTS DOWN.)

Scene 3
(LIGHTS UP.)

(Stage Right: A hotel swimming pool. People swim in the outdoor pool, enclosed by a fence, while other people watch from inside the hotel, through floor-to-ceiling glass windows. A woman, 30s, dives off a diving board and takes pictures with her camera phone while doing so.)

(Stage Left: Still in the kitchen, Erin and The State look at the woman's underwater pictures on a large monitor.)

(Stage Right: A MAN in a brown 70s suit walks outside the hotel and around the perimeter of the swimming pool. He watches the woman diving. As he makes a second round, a BRUNETTE LADY steps in front of him.)

BRUNETTE LADY: I don't mean to bother you, but where did you get your camera?

MAN: Wherever you got yours.

(The man pushes past the woman and resumes his walk. LIGHTS DOWN.)

Scene 4
(LIGHTS UP STAGE RIGHT. A cellphone rings. Erin, alone in the kitchen, answers it.)

(LIGHTS UP STAGE LEFT. VICKI drives a car.)

VICKI: Do you know which exit I take if I'm going to Bellevue? Back to Bellevue?

ERIN: Like... are you in school?

VICKI: I need to know which exit to take, so I can get there. Do you know which exit I need to take?

ERIN: From... Seattle?

VICKI: Which exit do I need to take?

ERIN: Um... I'll call you back...

(Erin hangs up the phone. LIGHTS DOWN STAGE LEFT. Erin exits the kitchen to Stage Left. LIGHTS UP STAGE LEFT. Erin enters the top of a staircase leading down to a backyard, incredibly foggy, even foggier than inside the kitchen. Only the top of the staircase is visible, from the light of a small lamp attached to the awning. Erin slowly, tentatively makes her way down the stairs.)

(CURTAIN.)





(NOTES: I cut out a tiny bit at the end in which Jacob and Tanya jump out from the side of the house at me. I cut it because... it clearly was a lead-in to a new plot-line, and I don't know what happened next. Also, my teacher stressed lack of dialogue in the piece (he just wanted a bunch of scene description? really vivid building depictions? who dreams about freakin' architecture?), so I cut out that scene with Vicki in the version I turned in. Which is kind of a bummer, cos that, after the pool-man, is one of my favorite parts of the dream.)

(I'd also like to point out that I do realize there is no one named Shannon in The State. Oh, and the song they were singing was actually "Sally" by Flight of the Conchords.)

(Also, yeah, I know that I have no idea how to format plays.)