Full Length Plays

The Story

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Betty is looking forward to a relaxing vacation at the ocean. But Trudy, whom she knows only slightly, chatters incessantly; and then there are the other housemates - sexy lout Buck, who’s pathologically on the make with women all the time, and sweet, withdrawn Keith who carries a shovel and a mysterious hatbox and just may be a serial killer. 

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Then the emotionally anarchic landlady, Mrs. Siezmagraff, moves in too, suddenly in need of a place to stay and in the mood to be around young people.

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To Betty’s surprise, Mrs. Siezmagraff is Trudy’s mother.  “But we don’t talk about it much because her father incested her when he was drunk, and I never did anything about it because I was co-dependent,” she explains helpfully to Betty.  “I mean, what should I have done?  Broken up the family and gone on welfare?”  She laughs at the impracticality of that thought.

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Buck keeps coming on to everyone, and shows Trudy his scrapbook of pictures of his penis.  And Keith keeps hiding in his room, though once he answers the door with bloody gloves on.  “I’m busy now,” he says.

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And then there’s the matter of the “laugh track” in the house.  At different times people’s comments are greeted by laughter – in the air?  Maybe from the ceiling?  It seems like the laughter from a sitcom.   And sometimes the “voices” speak in unison.

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Since no one can stop the voices, after a while they just accept them.

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Betty makes dinner the first night, and Mrs. Siezmagraff has a guest coming - a man she found hiding in the women’s changing room at the beach, taking pictures. “Some of the women hit him,” she says, but she thought he was fun. 

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Mr. Vanislaw arrives, only wearing a raincoat and flashing himself at the horrified Betty and Trudy.  “Look at my dicky!” he says, but then rushes off to Keith’s room anxious to meet the person who has “the head in the box.”  “Well, now, we don’t know there’s a head in the box,” Mrs. Siezmagraff reminds him.  “It could be just hats.”

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After dinner, a nutty game of charades follows, and everyone then goes off, leaving Betty to do the dishes.  

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Betty’s feeling gloomy, and the Voices encourage her to forget the dishes and go for a walk.  Betty decides they’re right, and heads out to the beach.  There’s silence for a while, and the Voices say “Nothing’s happening right now.  Gosh, we’re just staring at the furniture.”  They call out for somebody to come back, but nobody does.

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Later on, Mr. Vanislaw comes back with drunk Mrs. Siezmagraff, who passes out.  Vanislaw looks for Betty, but she’s not back, so he then pushes himself into Trudy’s room.  Trudy cries out, but her drunk mother (“I had seven margaritas!”) is too out of it to help.  

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Trudy’s rape is a scary part of the play – it’s not meant to be funny, but it’s also not a rape in a realistic play.

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Trudy comes out of her room enraged and gets a carving knife and follows Mr. Vanislaw, who’s gone into Keith’s room.  “Trudy,” warns Mrs. Siezmagraff, seeing the knife.  “Be nice now.” 

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There’s a terrible scream, and Trudy comes back with something in her hand.  She hands it to her mother.  “What is it?” she says.  “It’s his penis, stupid,” say the Voices.  

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Mrs. Siezmagraff is horrified, runs around confusedly, then puts it in the freezer for possible reattachment.  She calls 911 and then goes to check on the state of Mr. Vanislaw, but comes charging back out. 

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“Where is his head?  What did you do to his head?”  Trudy says she did nothing to the head.  “Well, he’s headless!  I invite a guest to this house and this is how he’s treated.”  She hangs up on 911 – the reattaching is pointless now.  Keith comes out and admits he cut off Mr. Vanislaw’s head because “he hurt Trudy.”

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From here the repercussions of Trudy and Keith’s actions become intertwined with the Voices in the ceiling.  The Voices start talking a lot more, and start bossing the characters around.  And they start picking favorites – finding Keith weird but oddly sweet, they announce their intention of nominating him for a People’s Choice Award.  

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Trudy, Keith and Mrs. Siezmagraff are exhausted from a visit to the police station, and Betty is fed up and plans to leave in the morning; and so they all go to bed.  This enrages the Voices, who scream and chant and demand people come back.  “Time to look in the freezer again,” they call.  “Or just come out and bicker in front of us again, we love insult comedy.  A-wooga!  A-wooga!”

 

Betty needs sleep desperately and charges back to insist they be quiet, when the Voices – in the form of a three person “entity” joined at the hips by tubing and wires – burst through the ceiling and scream “ENTERTAIN US!”

 

Everyone is terrified, as if they’ve been visited by aliens.  The Voices say how fascinated they are with the story of sensitive killer Keith and nutty neurotic Trudy, and how they can’t wait to follow their trial on Court TV.  In fact, they want to see it now, now, now!

 

Mrs. Siezmagraff, always up for a party, decides to oblige and puts on her own one woman Court TV trial, playing herself, the prosecuting attorney interrogating her, and a mysterious Irish maid with secret knowledge of Trudy’s childhood.  By the end of the floridly dramatic trial, the Voices are so moved that they acquit Trudy of all charges.

 

But the Voices are insatiable and want more excitement, and Betty tries to soothe them with a made-up fairy tale, but when Buck comes from a sexual tryst, the Voices become over-stimulated and urge rape and mayhem, pushing events into a kind of explosive Armageddon in which the house blows up and only Betty escapes.  Disoriented and frightened, she’s left standing alone on the beach, listening to the ocean, trying to find comfort in the sound of the waves.

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