Growing Up on the Wrong Side of Bingo
A monologue from the full-length play, Free Space
By Tara Meddaugh
(c) 2004
DETAILS
Cast: Female (or male)
Age range: teen-adult
Genre: Dark Comedy/Drama/Absurd
Running time: Approximately 1 ½ to 2 minutes
Setting: A front lawn outside a house, nighttime
About the play, Free Space:
Amelia spends her days under the watchful eye of her mother, doing the same nothing she has done for years. Yet when Bingo arrives at her local community center, a talking Bingo chip convinces Amelia that forming her own game is the way out of this life and away from her controlling mother. However, as her mother begins acting like her newly arrived sister, and the chip becomes increasingly dominating, Amelia discovers her new life is nothing as she imagined. Learn more about the play here.
About the monologue, Growing Up on the Wrong Side of Bingo, extracted from the play, Free Space:
Amelia has just been fired from her volunteer position helping out with Bingo at the local community center, due to refusing to leave the center and jabbing Diane, the Community Center Director, with a bingo chip. It is now late at night and she is outside Diane’s home. She begs for her job back and explains how important Bingo is in her life.
____________________
AMELIA
No, wait! Okay, I’m ready to talk.
(pause)
Okay. I just wanted to say that, well, I haven’t done a lot of stuff or anything since High School ended. I just sort of stay at home with my mom and, I don’t really do a lot of activities like a lot of girls do. But I’ve been waiting for Bingo to come here for all my life. I mean, I didn’t really know it was Bingo I was waiting for, but I knew there must be—something more…And when I saw that poster you made—When I saw the pictures of those solid square spaces—all so perfectly in line with each other, and when I stopped by the Center for the first time last week… and I heard all those jumbled up balls, racing through their metal cage, all trying to be the special one chosen to be…well, I knew then my Thursdays would never be the same. Because—Because I know what it’s like to grow up on the wrong side of Bingo, on the wrong end of chance, of luck. You know? I was so—END OF EXCERPT
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