THE BEST MARRIAGE ADVICE
A monologue by Tara Meddaugh
From the full-length play, BLACK AND WHITE AND RED ALL OVER)
About the play, Black and White and Red All Over:
When Wife charges Husband with the perilous mission of finding her a new heart, his actions set into motion a series of unusual events, resulting in four strangers being left in his bathroom. One individual has a will, one has a makeup bag, one doesn’t know his name, and one has a gun. And no one has any idea why anyone else is there…
About the monologue, The Best Marriage Advice:
Georgia is speaking to a young man and woman who have just met in this bathroom. The couple is in the bathtub, shower curtain pulled so Georgia cannot see them, but they are presumably making love, as they both have admitted they are young and attractive, and this should be the natural course of events. Georgia is a make-up artist, and older, believing she has much wisdom to impart. She offers them the sage advice to purchase a dog before children, and relays her tragic experiences of such experiences.
DETAILS
Genre: absurdist, comedic
Time Period: late 1990s
Cast: Female
Age range: 30s-70s
Running time: Approximately 2 minutes
____________________
GEORGIA
What a lovely time to meet. Well, I'll offer you just a bit of advice, if I may. I should think you ought to purchase a dog before you have children, considering that is the patriotic thing to do. And I'm sure you'll find many advantages to this purchase, as well. My husband and I bought a dog and named him Granddad after my granddad. Granddad had a terrible habit of running into the street and he was hit by a car one day and died, right before my eyes. Then we bought another dog and named him Granddad after our previous dog that died. Granddad had a nasty compulsion of chasing cars and so one day a car ran Granddad right over and he died, just simply died. After that we bought another dog and named him Mugger. But Mugger was just like the rest and got hit by a car and died. I was, naturally, quite disappointed, this having been our third dog that died and all. Then as I walked to Mugger's body, a neighbor stopped me and told me I ought to keep my dogs on a leash and perhaps they wouldn't run into the road and die quite so often. Well, I thought this was an absolutely brilliant idea and—END OF EXCERPT
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To learn more about the character, Georgia, and to read the full-length play from which this monologue comes, check out the play, Black and White and Red All Over, below:
A frivolous couple passes irrelevant time by hiring and firing servants, and trying to make sense of articles in stacks of old newspapers. But when the Wife wants more out of her life, she charges her Husband with a perilous task... Meanwhile, four eclectic strangers wind up secretly waiting together in this couple's bathroom. When they discover the reasons they have all been put together, the absurdities and danger of their situation become alarmingly clear. This is an absurdist dark comedy about finding truth amongst different realities, self-interest versus altruism and how far someone will go for the people they love. It harkens back to writers like Ionesco, Beckett and Durang, bringing a heightened world, playful language, absurd, sometimes cruel, humor.
This absurdist play has 12 roles (3 male, 3 female, and 6 male/female) and runs approximately 100 minutes.
Read a free excerpt here.