breakinglight11 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
breakinglight11) wrote2021-01-11 09:42 pm
breakinglight11) wrote2021-01-11 09:42 pm
“The Pond Girl” — a ten-minute play written in 24 hours
The Bechdel Group invited me to write a ten-minute play for a 24-hour challenge this past weekend. I was approached by an old friend from grad school at Lesley, MJ, who was also a writer in the challenge. They asked us to contribute something on a theme of beginnings and endings, and specifically geared to be theater for young people.
It’s not my first 24-hour scriptwriting challenge, but since it went from 1PM to 1PM, it was a little easier for me than the overnight ones I’ve done in the past. I’m actually pretty happy with the piece I slapped together in that time. It’s notable for things I’ve produced under these conditions in that it’s fairly well-built structurally, something that I usually find tricky in the absence of a lot of pre-planning or revision. Several elements tied together a lot better than I was anticipating. It could of course use some polishing, but it’s not bad for a bang-together.
Maybe I’ll record it as an audio drama with some people. It would be a nice easy project, and I think it would work well as audio-only.
The Pond Girl
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~
At St. Ursula’s Catholic High School, in the present day
AMY, a sophomore
OLIVIA, a freshman
WENDY, a girl they don’t know
~~~
AMY and OLIVIA, two young girls in Catholic school uniforms, rush in with a bundle they are trying to conceal.
AMY: Is she looking? Is she looking? (When OLIVIA turns to look) Don’t look, Liv!
OLIVIA: Then how will I know if she’s looking?
AMY: If you look all weird, she’s going to see us!
OLIVIA: I don’t think she’s looking.
AMY: Are you absolutely sure? If Sister Bernice catches us, she’s going to flip her wimple.
OLIVIA: She’s gone, she’s gone, okay, Amy? I waited until she spotted Dylan get his vape out.
AMY: Okay, okay.
AMY unwraps the bundle to reveal a ouija board.
OLIVIA: Are you sure about this?
AMY: Yeah, don’t be a baby, Olivia.
OLIVIA: Where did you even get that thing?
AMY: It was in the bottom of my cousin’s closet. She doesn’t even know; I stole it out of there in my backpack.
OLIVIA: What were you doing in her closet?
AMY: She wouldn’t let me borrow her shoes. (Off Olivia’s look) What? It was my birthday party!
OLIVIA: Does it have the little… planch— plancho— the big guitar pick with an eye in it?
AMY: Yeah, it’s no good without it. How else can you get messages from the spirits?
She produces it with a flourish.
AMY: See, the board is like, the conduit. You put your hands on the thingy, and the spirit spells out their words by moving it under your hands.
OLIVIA: Wow. What if the spirit can’t spell?
AMY: Are you kidding?
OLIVIA: I don’t know! I couldn’t spell “function” in the note I passed to Carly, and the thing I wrote instead made Sister Helen give me detention.
AMY: Well, I don’t think ghosts are, like, bound by the limits of human spelling. When we call them, they’ll make themselves heard.
OLIVIA: But who are we going to call? I don’t know a lot of dead people. I guess there’s my grandma. But she’s going to be mad we’re messing with the nuns.
AMY: I want to call the Pond Ghost. The one who lives in Coney Pond.
OLIVIA: Call her? Like, on iPhone? Do you have her number?
AMY: Come on, she’s perfect! She died right here on the grounds, she went to our school— so she’d probably be into us screwing with the nuns!
OLIVIA: Are you sure she’s even real?
AMY: Uh-huh! Kelvin saw her when he fell down on the kickball field.
OLIVIA: Kelvin fell down because he got beaned in the head.
AMY: Yeah, well, who do you think it is stealing all the kickballs? What alive person needs that many kickballs?
OLIVIA: Okay, so… what are you going to ask her?
AMY: Oh. Like, tons of things. Like…
WENDY: Like what?
AMY and OLIVIA jump as WENDY, another girl in a Catholic school uniform, appears.
AMY: Jesus! You scared the pee out of me! Who are you, anyway?
WENDY: I’m Wendy. What are you doing?
OLIVIA: We’re gonna talk to the Pond Girl on the ouija board.
AMY: Liv! We don’t know her! She might rat us out to Sister Bernice!
WENDY: Me? I’m no rat. Bernice is the one who confiscates cigarettes and then smokes them herself behind the cafeteria.
OLIVIA: No way— Sister Bernie? No wonder she’s after Dylan with that vape!
AMY: How do you know that? Do you even go here?
WENDY: No, I just jumped a freshman so I could steal her uniform. So, what are you going to ask the Pond Girl?
AMY: Well, tons of things.
WENDY: You said.
AMY: Yeah, like… how did you die?
WENDY: Oh, that’s original.
AMY: Excuse me?
WENDY: Asking a ghost girl how she died. Bet she never heard that one before.
OLIVIA: Don’t we know how she died? She drowned. That’s why she’s, you know. The Pond Girl.
AMY: Well— that’s how we’ll know it’s really her.
WENDY: Instead of all the other ghosts chilling at St. Ursula’s?
OLIVIA: Oh, Jesus. She’s right. This one time, I thought I was texting with Jaden, and he got kind of nasty, and he was trying to get me to meet him after curfew, and, long story short— I was actually texting Brandon.
AMY: Brandon Greendale? Gross! See, you want us to talk to a Brandon ghost?
WENDY: What if she lies?
OLIVIA: Oo, Brandons do lie. Amy, what if we get a Brandon ghost who lies?
AMY: What’s with you? Why are you being such a baby about this?
OLIVIA: I’m not being a baby! I just don’t want to screw with some dead girl who’s just trying to sleep in a lake!
AMY: She’s dead, she can sleep whenever!
OLIVIA: Why do you even want to talk to her? You don’t even have any questions!
AMY: I do! I told you! I got tons of them! Like…
WENDY: Yeah?
AMY: What’s it like being dead?
WENDY: Ha!
AMY: What? That’s a good question!
OLIVIA: It is kind of good.
WENDY: What’s she gonna say? “My corpse nose itches, but my corpse hand can’t scratch it”?
AMY: You don’t know! How else are we gonna find out?
WENDY: You could screw around and find out.
AMY: Oh, you think you’re real bad, huh?
WENDY: You do— you’re the one who thinks you can mess with ghosts.
AMY: I’m not scared. What’s she gonna do— steal my kickball?
WENDY: Oh. So you don’t know the whole story.
AMY: What whole story?
WENDY: Of what happened to Pond Girl.
OLIVIA: What happened? She drowned. Right? She drowned. Right?
WENDY: Well. It was before they put the fence around the pond. In the bad old days, before things were safe.
OLIVIA: Like… 1990?
WENDY: Yeah. In the dead of winter, they were playing on that very ball field, when a girl came up to the plate. Now, she wasn’t like a lot of the other St. Ursula kids. Her mom worked at the diner, and she didn’t have a dad, and all her clothes came from Handy Thrift.
AMY: Thrift style is cool now.
WENDY: Yeah, well, it wasn’t then! So when she came up to the plate, everybody was hassling her. Like they’d been hassling her all day. Like they had been every day, for the whole school year. So when she came up to the plate, all her rage went into kicking that ball— all the way out of the field, all the way onto the frozen pond.
OLIVIA: Home run, though! Right?
WENDY: She didn’t get to run home! They made her go get that ball! Even thought she knew she was in danger. They made her go out onto the ice— until it cracked beneath her, and she disappeared forever into the pond. They doomed her to crash into the icy depths— all for a kickball!
OLIVIA: Oh, my God! Is that why she steals kickballs!?
WENDY: The kickball’s not the point! The point is, she was more scared of them than she was of the ice.
AMY: Oh, my God. Sounds like that was a mistake.
WENDY: But now, she lurks forever at St. Ursula’s. Haunting the schoolyard—
OLIVIA: Stealing the kickballs!
WENDY: Will you forget about the kickballs already!? She’s hunting for bullies! Bullies like the ones who forced her out onto that ice.
AMY: Okay. So?
WENDY: So, you sure you want to mess with that?
AMY: I told you, I’m not scared of her. If she’s so tough, why’s she dead?
WENDY: Heh. I wonder if that’s what Kelvin said.
OLIVIA: What about Kelvin?
WENDY: Didn’t you hear? He was smack talking a kid during a game. Giving him shit for his lisp and his K-mart shoes. She came down on him like a ton of bricks. And last thing he saw before he passed out was Pond Girl, standing over him.
AMY: What? No. Kelvin got hit with a ball!
WENDY: Yeah. A kickball.
AMY: (After a long pause.) Ugh. Whatever. Screw this. This is dumb.
WENDY: Wait, aren’t you going to talk to the ghost?
AMY: No, forget it. I don’t believe in ghosts anyway.
AMY gets up to leave.
OLIVIA: Wait— what about your ouija board?
AMY: I don’t want that thing anymore! It’s not even mine.
OLIVIA: But you took it from your cousin’s—!
But AMY is already gone.
OLIVIA: What am I going to do with this? If Sister Bernie catches me with it—
WENDY: Leave it here, and she won’t. You don’t got to do anything with it now. Not if you don’t want to.
OLIVIA: Huh. Good point. Thanks. And… thanks for talking her out of it. That was cool of you.
WENDY: Don’t mention it. I was going to tell her anyway.
OLIVIA: But how’d you know? Hey— why did you come over, anyway?
WENDY: What?
OLIVIA: You know, in the first place. Why’d you come over and talk to us?
WENDY: Oh, well— I had the same problem as you once.
OLIVIA: What do you mean?
WENDY: I can’t spell either.
Curtain.
It’s not my first 24-hour scriptwriting challenge, but since it went from 1PM to 1PM, it was a little easier for me than the overnight ones I’ve done in the past. I’m actually pretty happy with the piece I slapped together in that time. It’s notable for things I’ve produced under these conditions in that it’s fairly well-built structurally, something that I usually find tricky in the absence of a lot of pre-planning or revision. Several elements tied together a lot better than I was anticipating. It could of course use some polishing, but it’s not bad for a bang-together.
Maybe I’ll record it as an audio drama with some people. It would be a nice easy project, and I think it would work well as audio-only.
The Pond Girl
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~
At St. Ursula’s Catholic High School, in the present day
AMY, a sophomore
OLIVIA, a freshman
WENDY, a girl they don’t know
~~~
AMY and OLIVIA, two young girls in Catholic school uniforms, rush in with a bundle they are trying to conceal.
AMY: Is she looking? Is she looking? (When OLIVIA turns to look) Don’t look, Liv!
OLIVIA: Then how will I know if she’s looking?
AMY: If you look all weird, she’s going to see us!
OLIVIA: I don’t think she’s looking.
AMY: Are you absolutely sure? If Sister Bernice catches us, she’s going to flip her wimple.
OLIVIA: She’s gone, she’s gone, okay, Amy? I waited until she spotted Dylan get his vape out.
AMY: Okay, okay.
AMY unwraps the bundle to reveal a ouija board.
OLIVIA: Are you sure about this?
AMY: Yeah, don’t be a baby, Olivia.
OLIVIA: Where did you even get that thing?
AMY: It was in the bottom of my cousin’s closet. She doesn’t even know; I stole it out of there in my backpack.
OLIVIA: What were you doing in her closet?
AMY: She wouldn’t let me borrow her shoes. (Off Olivia’s look) What? It was my birthday party!
OLIVIA: Does it have the little… planch— plancho— the big guitar pick with an eye in it?
AMY: Yeah, it’s no good without it. How else can you get messages from the spirits?
She produces it with a flourish.
AMY: See, the board is like, the conduit. You put your hands on the thingy, and the spirit spells out their words by moving it under your hands.
OLIVIA: Wow. What if the spirit can’t spell?
AMY: Are you kidding?
OLIVIA: I don’t know! I couldn’t spell “function” in the note I passed to Carly, and the thing I wrote instead made Sister Helen give me detention.
AMY: Well, I don’t think ghosts are, like, bound by the limits of human spelling. When we call them, they’ll make themselves heard.
OLIVIA: But who are we going to call? I don’t know a lot of dead people. I guess there’s my grandma. But she’s going to be mad we’re messing with the nuns.
AMY: I want to call the Pond Ghost. The one who lives in Coney Pond.
OLIVIA: Call her? Like, on iPhone? Do you have her number?
AMY: Come on, she’s perfect! She died right here on the grounds, she went to our school— so she’d probably be into us screwing with the nuns!
OLIVIA: Are you sure she’s even real?
AMY: Uh-huh! Kelvin saw her when he fell down on the kickball field.
OLIVIA: Kelvin fell down because he got beaned in the head.
AMY: Yeah, well, who do you think it is stealing all the kickballs? What alive person needs that many kickballs?
OLIVIA: Okay, so… what are you going to ask her?
AMY: Oh. Like, tons of things. Like…
WENDY: Like what?
AMY and OLIVIA jump as WENDY, another girl in a Catholic school uniform, appears.
AMY: Jesus! You scared the pee out of me! Who are you, anyway?
WENDY: I’m Wendy. What are you doing?
OLIVIA: We’re gonna talk to the Pond Girl on the ouija board.
AMY: Liv! We don’t know her! She might rat us out to Sister Bernice!
WENDY: Me? I’m no rat. Bernice is the one who confiscates cigarettes and then smokes them herself behind the cafeteria.
OLIVIA: No way— Sister Bernie? No wonder she’s after Dylan with that vape!
AMY: How do you know that? Do you even go here?
WENDY: No, I just jumped a freshman so I could steal her uniform. So, what are you going to ask the Pond Girl?
AMY: Well, tons of things.
WENDY: You said.
AMY: Yeah, like… how did you die?
WENDY: Oh, that’s original.
AMY: Excuse me?
WENDY: Asking a ghost girl how she died. Bet she never heard that one before.
OLIVIA: Don’t we know how she died? She drowned. That’s why she’s, you know. The Pond Girl.
AMY: Well— that’s how we’ll know it’s really her.
WENDY: Instead of all the other ghosts chilling at St. Ursula’s?
OLIVIA: Oh, Jesus. She’s right. This one time, I thought I was texting with Jaden, and he got kind of nasty, and he was trying to get me to meet him after curfew, and, long story short— I was actually texting Brandon.
AMY: Brandon Greendale? Gross! See, you want us to talk to a Brandon ghost?
WENDY: What if she lies?
OLIVIA: Oo, Brandons do lie. Amy, what if we get a Brandon ghost who lies?
AMY: What’s with you? Why are you being such a baby about this?
OLIVIA: I’m not being a baby! I just don’t want to screw with some dead girl who’s just trying to sleep in a lake!
AMY: She’s dead, she can sleep whenever!
OLIVIA: Why do you even want to talk to her? You don’t even have any questions!
AMY: I do! I told you! I got tons of them! Like…
WENDY: Yeah?
AMY: What’s it like being dead?
WENDY: Ha!
AMY: What? That’s a good question!
OLIVIA: It is kind of good.
WENDY: What’s she gonna say? “My corpse nose itches, but my corpse hand can’t scratch it”?
AMY: You don’t know! How else are we gonna find out?
WENDY: You could screw around and find out.
AMY: Oh, you think you’re real bad, huh?
WENDY: You do— you’re the one who thinks you can mess with ghosts.
AMY: I’m not scared. What’s she gonna do— steal my kickball?
WENDY: Oh. So you don’t know the whole story.
AMY: What whole story?
WENDY: Of what happened to Pond Girl.
OLIVIA: What happened? She drowned. Right? She drowned. Right?
WENDY: Well. It was before they put the fence around the pond. In the bad old days, before things were safe.
OLIVIA: Like… 1990?
WENDY: Yeah. In the dead of winter, they were playing on that very ball field, when a girl came up to the plate. Now, she wasn’t like a lot of the other St. Ursula kids. Her mom worked at the diner, and she didn’t have a dad, and all her clothes came from Handy Thrift.
AMY: Thrift style is cool now.
WENDY: Yeah, well, it wasn’t then! So when she came up to the plate, everybody was hassling her. Like they’d been hassling her all day. Like they had been every day, for the whole school year. So when she came up to the plate, all her rage went into kicking that ball— all the way out of the field, all the way onto the frozen pond.
OLIVIA: Home run, though! Right?
WENDY: She didn’t get to run home! They made her go get that ball! Even thought she knew she was in danger. They made her go out onto the ice— until it cracked beneath her, and she disappeared forever into the pond. They doomed her to crash into the icy depths— all for a kickball!
OLIVIA: Oh, my God! Is that why she steals kickballs!?
WENDY: The kickball’s not the point! The point is, she was more scared of them than she was of the ice.
AMY: Oh, my God. Sounds like that was a mistake.
WENDY: But now, she lurks forever at St. Ursula’s. Haunting the schoolyard—
OLIVIA: Stealing the kickballs!
WENDY: Will you forget about the kickballs already!? She’s hunting for bullies! Bullies like the ones who forced her out onto that ice.
AMY: Okay. So?
WENDY: So, you sure you want to mess with that?
AMY: I told you, I’m not scared of her. If she’s so tough, why’s she dead?
WENDY: Heh. I wonder if that’s what Kelvin said.
OLIVIA: What about Kelvin?
WENDY: Didn’t you hear? He was smack talking a kid during a game. Giving him shit for his lisp and his K-mart shoes. She came down on him like a ton of bricks. And last thing he saw before he passed out was Pond Girl, standing over him.
AMY: What? No. Kelvin got hit with a ball!
WENDY: Yeah. A kickball.
AMY: (After a long pause.) Ugh. Whatever. Screw this. This is dumb.
WENDY: Wait, aren’t you going to talk to the ghost?
AMY: No, forget it. I don’t believe in ghosts anyway.
AMY gets up to leave.
OLIVIA: Wait— what about your ouija board?
AMY: I don’t want that thing anymore! It’s not even mine.
OLIVIA: But you took it from your cousin’s—!
But AMY is already gone.
OLIVIA: What am I going to do with this? If Sister Bernie catches me with it—
WENDY: Leave it here, and she won’t. You don’t got to do anything with it now. Not if you don’t want to.
OLIVIA: Huh. Good point. Thanks. And… thanks for talking her out of it. That was cool of you.
WENDY: Don’t mention it. I was going to tell her anyway.
OLIVIA: But how’d you know? Hey— why did you come over, anyway?
WENDY: What?
OLIVIA: You know, in the first place. Why’d you come over and talk to us?
WENDY: Oh, well— I had the same problem as you once.
OLIVIA: What do you mean?
WENDY: I can’t spell either.
Curtain.