One Minute Plays
These two plays premiered at the 1st Seattle One-Minute Play Festival, May 10 & 11, 2014 in the Bullitt Cabaret at ACT Theatre in Seattle. Juice was directed by Jen Moon and featured Sarah Milici and Mahria Zook; Fortune was directed by Richard Ziman and featured Lisa Viertel, Jill Snyder Marr, and Frank Lawler.
Copyright Holly Arsenault, 2013. All rights reserved. This text may not be reproduced or performed without explicit, written consent of the author.
Please direct inquiries to hollypla@gmail.com.
Photo by Seth Tankus
Juice
By Holly Arsenault
A bored juicemaker stands behind a counter, talking to a customer. Nothing in either character’s tone or manner should indicate that anything in their conversation is out of the ordinary.
JUICER. Strawberry banana blast.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Marionberry peach-o-rama.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Blueberry hucklefest.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Pear passion picnic.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Wheatgrass melon finger.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Plum eyelash squid.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Peanut butter blood rash.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Amniotic apple crack.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Hotel hobo jelly.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Skintag piss shot.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Dandruff bile belch.
CUSTOMER. Tile?
JUICER. No, bile.
CUSTOMER. Oh. No.
JUICER. Mustard gas pickle mucous?
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Bathwater vomit.
CUSTOMER. No.
JUICER. Band-aid bone shave.
CUSTOMER (makes a ‘thinking about it’ face) Uh…no.
JUICER. Windex shit cum.
CUSTOMER. (positively) Hm.
JUICER. That one?
CUSTOMER. Uh…yeah.
JUICER. Sure.
THE END
Fortune
By Holly Arsenault
A city bus. A man sits on one end of a bench seat. A woman sits on the other end with a closed book on her lap. Between them sits a crazy lady. They all look forward. Whenever the CRAZY LADY says “you” she indicates with a slight head movement or other subtle gesture which of the two she is referring to.
THE CRAZY LADY. (Delivered rapidly and without pauses, in the manner of a mentally ill person talking to herself or an unseen other person.) You met on the bus. You were reading a book. You asked what the book was. You were annoyed that you were talking to you while you were reading. But then you saw a kind of dog that you like out the window and you looked at the dog too and said something nice about those kinds of dogs and you said something nice about them too and that is how you met. Later you had a baby and it was supposed to be a home birth but your water didn’t splash instead the fluid just leaked out of you for a few hours and then it was too late and you had to go to the hospital (the woman pulls the cord, the bell dings) and you felt bad you felt like a failure but you made you feel so much better even though you couldn’t really understand but still you tried and that is when you really fell in love with you and you thought it was scary that you had been together for so long and had a baby together but only just then fallen in love but oh well at least you were in love now and it’s good because you had this baby. (The woman stands to exit the bus) The baby grew up and found out a special gene that caused a rare disease that not that many people die from but enough people do and now nobody dies from that anymore because of your baby. (She exits.)
NOTE: As the woman stands and exits the bus she pulls out her phone which we see is connected to ear buds in both ears. At the same time, the man pulls an iPod out of his pocket to switch songs and pushes back his hoodie and we see that he also had ear buds in both ears.
THE END