FIND ME
A one-woman thriller play/monologue
by Tara Meddaugh
Yearning for her deceased husband, Elizabeth embarks on a chilling quest to bring him closer to her…
DETAILS
Genre: Spooky/thriller/drama
Cast: Female
Age range: Late teen/20s/30s
Running time: around 5-10 minutes, depending on performance
Setting: Outdoors, in the deep of the night, a private burial site at a family estate in Sing Sing, NY
Time Period: 1850s
Great for/tags: Halloween theater, spooky, creepy, grief, longing, love, monologue, one-woman show, outdoor theater
“In the 1850s, when Dale Cemetery opened, many local graveyards at churches and estates dug up their dead and moved them to Dale for reburial. It was quite a gruesome sight.”
EXCERPT
The private family burial site at an estate in Sing Sing, NY, 1850s. Deep into the night. ELIZABETH, a woman in her 20s-30s, has been digging up the coffin and corpse of her deceased husband. She has a shovel and continues to dig on and off. The CORPSE/COFFIN may or may not be visible.
ELIZABETH
Grandmother says moving the dead will release their souls to the air…
(Looking down to the COFFIN)
Is that true?
(Digging with a shovel)
She says they will wander and search, and wander and search, like fireflies lighting up the summer night sky.
I asked her, this morning, while we were quilting, what they would be searching for.
“A place to settle,” she told me.
I thought you were already settled in your bodies, but Grandmother says bodies, corpses, they’re only vessels. She says the earth, your grave, this is your home. So when you’re moved, you’re disturbed. And you must search for a new home.
Mama does not like Grandmother to talk in this manner. Mama is a woman of Science and Facts, as you know, while Grandmother is open to everything that lies between. So Mama says you’ll have a new home in your new grave. She says Dale Cemetery will be beautiful and peaceful. She doesn’t want to live in a plague spot anymore, and when the bodies are moved, she says it will be safer and better for all of us, especially the baby in my growing womb.
Mama took a firm breath after this and walked off to the kitchen. She thought making tea would put a stop to our conversation, but neither Grandmother nor I wished to cease our talk about…the dead…
(Looking down to the COFFIN/CORPSE)
You…
While Mama was in the kitchen, Grandmother turned to me. “Mmmmmm,” she warned. “It will not be better for all of us. Do not be here when they move the bodies. They are not all good people buried there. And those who were good, beyond the grave…can go bad.” —END OF EXCERPT
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