OH EM GEE THE BUSY. I am all of it. And this little corner of me is getting a bit neglected. Here follows some snippets of things I have done over the past few weeks, first up: a one page play I wrote from the word ‘Today’ for Box of Tricks Theatre Company‘s celebration of their move to Manchester/farewell to London. I couldn’t make it myself, but it sounded ace. Here’s the words:
Today – Hannah Nicklin
Alice and Ben, she’s late 20s, he’s early 30s, probably in some kind of a relationship. He’s on his iPhone, she’s at her laptop, both sat in front of the Telly (which is on).
Alice: Sometimes I get worried that I’m going to forget to sound like I care about other people so when they say ‘how are you?’ I don’t actually answer, and skip straight to the ‘how are you?’ back.
Ben: I don’t even know how you can get that many points
Alice: Today, at work, I saw a woman who’s been to have a baby or whatever and she came in and obviously everyone’s all cooing and hugging and that’s another thing, why can’t we all just decided whether we hug, or kiss, and kiss once, or twice –
Ben: it’s not proper, though, is it. Not like proper scoring, it’s made up, isn’t it, so they don’t get sued or anything
Alice: And I’ve already messed that up, I do the hug, but then she goes in for a kiss as well and I’m sort of making her kiss my hair and I get a bit confused and make a too-late kissing face in mid air
Ben: I don’t even know what it means, though, what does it even mean? Porizing. A zed too. It’s probably American. It probably shouldn’t count.
Alice: and of course she’s not asked me how I am or anything because who cares how I am, she’s the one who gone and made a baby or whatever, so I don’t mean that’s exactly the problem, that I don’t answer her question, it’s just-
Ben: did you know there’s a thing call appgrabble? Or something like that. There’s a tumblr for it. Well, of course there fucking is.
Alice: And actually all I can think about when I hug her is that I’m a little frightened of her stomach, of her, y’know, her belly, where it was. It feels a little, I dunno, it feels like hugging a, a black hole or something, a place where, you know, things were but aren’t any more
Ben: and these people spell out words using the little pictures, the little pictures that are the apps on the screen of your phone, and people use them to spell out words. There was actually someone who managed supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Alice: And so all I was thinking about was how I probably shouldn’t be thinking about that place where her belly had been the last time I saw her but wasn’t anymore, and then I was thinking about flesh eating grubs, or something-
Ben: I bet Words With Friends would allow that an all.
Alice: and then I realise she had asked me how I was, probably because I’d been standing with my mouth in a sort of after-kiss position gazing off over her left shoulder for a bit longer than was ok. And I still hadn’t answered.
Ben: there’s probably not room for it on the board, actually.
Pause
Alice: I made a pretty funny joke about it on twitter afterwards, though, so it was ok.
Silence
End
Image by Box of Tricks, from their Facebook account, used with their permission.