WRITTEN : April-May 1995.
First Performed June 23rd 1995, Sutherland Memorial School of Arts, NSW.
Performed by Roundabout Theatre and Community Projects
GIRL - Camille Scaysbrook
BOY - Steven Holland
DONNA - Sarah Folwell
Directed by Camille Scaysbrook for `THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE TO SAY' - Sutherland Memorial School of Arts. Directed by Camille Scaysbrook.
McHappiness was written in around May 1995 for another play festival. I had originally planned to produce a repeat season of AM I YOUR DREAM ? but the actors and I soon decided it might be better to come up with some new material instead (This is before it won the award). I was still clinging to the NOT THAT LONG material to a certain extent, although this is not such a direct borrowing as as AM I YOUR DREAM? but is more an exploration of one of the main themes. Thematically and spiritually I quickly realised it is a kind of symbiotic sequel to AM I YOUR DREAM ? It was only afterwards that I realised the two characters had also first seen each other in a cinema too, and their fate was a reversal of their fate. The kiss was not in the original script, one of the actors (Steven Holland) suggested it and it seemed a logical culmination. It was performed in June 1995, and is the only one of my plays that I have appeared in myself.
McHAPPINESS seems to keep popping up. Not holding it in such reverence as DREAM? I was not afraid to change it, and I always liked the title, and the kind of postmodern wistfulness a title like `McHAPPINESS' implied. A second, longer draft was produced, which added a lot of the conversation and searched to find a larger theme - the pursuit of stability. It has often found its way into my screenplay projects, especially because of the fact that while car scenes are perfect fodder for dramatic action - you can't leave a car, you're forced to deal with the situation - they are absolute buggers to represent convincingly onstage. This is where the radio McHappiness comes in, which warrants a special mention for several reasons. I had wished to tackle a `car play' for a long time - the first play I ever attempted to write was a car play (1992, now sadly lost) with a theme similar to McHAPPINESS, come to think of it, a car also being a vessel of freedom. The radio McHAPPINESS is so different to the stage version that I almost considered a different name, but its theme is so well embodied in it - transience, love, and moments, all occuring around the only thing we all have in common - popular culture. In all ways, this radio play was consciously written as my final play as a teenager and as a culmination of all the work in this volume - it's a hyperworld where characters from all of these plays appear, situations are rewritten and the characters realise the staginess of life : we order it in scenes and snapshots to try and make sense of it. It passes like the pictures on a zoetrope, and only when we look inside do we realise what seems to be a continuum is really a set of separate pictures.
by Camille Scaysbrook
CAST - 2 girls (DONNA and GIRL), 1 boy (BOY).
GIRL - There is a suggestion that she is perhaps a little more well - off than the boy. She should be fairly well dressed in contrast to him, maybe in earth tones or pastels. She is, at least initially, more restrained than the boy. It is clear that her passion is much less of a familiar emotion to her than to the boy.
BOY - The boy is a little `rough around the edges' but is very congenial and easy to get along with. He should be dressed in darker clothes than the girl, and less nicely. He is more of a free spirit than the girl, and can more easily express himself without censoring his thoughts. He is more nonchalant than she is about himself.
DONNA - Donna is your average, slightly anonymous `friend of a friend'. She is not particularly close to either character but it is insinuated that she has known both of them for a long time.
(Three people in a car, one girl driving and two people, a boy and a girl, who are obviously strangers. `KEEP 'EM SEPARATED' by Offspring is on the radio. They have just pulled up outside a Food Plus. Donna leans over and turns off the radio.)
DONNA - I'll go in for you, I can use my employer's discount card. What do you want ?
BOY - Could you get us a bottle of Coke ? (hands over money)
GIRL - Can I have a packet of Extra? That new one, in the pink wrapper. (hands over money)
DONNA - 'Kay. You guys wait here. I'll see you in a sec.
(She leaves. The Boy and Girl are left alone. A long, uneasy silence follows before the girl finally speaks up. )
GIRL - Hey, I've seen you before. Were you at ....
BOY - Yeah, I was. At Donna's birthday party, you mean ?
GIRL - Yeah, I thought I saw you there. Everyone was watching `Outbreak' on the video.
BOY - Yeah. That was the night I got arrested for impersonating a police officer.
GIRL - Impersonating a .... God, how'd you manage to do that?
BOY - I had Michael Earnshaw's Dad's police shirt on - under my flannie, like as if all policemen wear like flannies to work - You know Michael Earnshaw ?
GIRL - I recognise the name .
BOY - Yeah. He's in this band with me.
GIRL - Oh, yeah ? Any good ?
BOY - No actually. He spends half his time laughing at his own jokes .
GIRL - Guess someone's got to. So ... what d'you think of the movie?
BOY - What, `Outbreak' ? You know - God, that Dustin Hoffman guy has a big nose ! He turns around and its like PYOING !!!
GIRL - I didn't even want to see it. I would've rather got out `Little Women'.
BOY - Pee - yew ! CHICK MOVIE !
GIRL - I like Winona Ryder.
BOY - Yeah, she's pretty nice.
GIRL - Yeah... (another short, uneasy silence. The Girl looks out in the direction Donna left by) God, ten years later .... so, where are you off to?
BOY - Oh, me and Donna thought we'd go down to Tilt, have a couple of games of Air Hockey or something. Just hang out.
GIRL - Yeah. I live just down that street there. Donna always gives me a lift after my violin class. How do you know Donna, anyway ?
BOY - Me n' her used to go to Tai Kwon Do together.
GIRL - Really ? I didn't know she did Tai Kwon Do !
BOY - Yeah. She broke this guy's nose, even .
GIRL - Yeah ? Whose ?
BOY - Um ... mine, actually.
GIRL - (Not really knowing how to respond to this) Ouch!
BOY - It still clicks when I blow it sometimes. You go to Donna's school, don't you?
GIRL - Yeah. It's a hole. Where do you go ?
BOY - Engadine . Well, I did, I've left now.
GIRL - Yeah ? Hey, do you know ... whasisface - Barry Harrison?
BOY - Nope.
GIRL - He used to play guitar at our church. We have this priest whose like, totally deaf ....
BOY - Too much Megadeth, huh ?
GIRL - Yeah, and get this - his name is Steve Martin !
BOY - No way !
GIRL - Yeah ! He gets up there - this is like the Young Person's Church service - and he bellows his friggin' lungs out ! ` `COMMITMENT, PEOPLE. COMMITMENT IS WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT! None of all this FRITTERING around from place to place or person to person. STABILITY ! COMMITMENT !' I think he says it just to scare us into staying with the church.
BOY - God. Amos MacKinley'd be really into him .
GIRL - Who ?
BOY - Oh, this Holy Roller guy who used to be in my economics class. He never did his homework, he just got all this information off the Internet and wrote his name at the bottom of it and printed it out. I tried to tell our teacher, but she didn't believe me. She doesn't even know what the Internet is!
GIRL - No way ! Where's she been living the past year, under a rock ? (pause) Are you gonna go to Uni ?
BOY - Um ... yeah. I'm movin' up to Bathurst, living with some rello's.
GIRL - We're moving up to Queensland after Christmas. My Dad got transferred. We're already packing.
BOY - What, packing clothes, or packing shit ?
GIRL - Both !
BOY - Geez. Looks like we've both got a whole lot of new friends to make.
GIRL - Yeah. It's a pain.
(an awkward silence.)
BOY - I hate stupid silences.
GIRL - That's the seven minute's silence. See, there's this theory that there's this moment of silence every seven minutes in a conversation .
BOY - Hmph. Probably invented by someone who hates silences and wanted something to talk about in them .
GIRL - Okay, let's talk about something different then. Talk about the first thing that comes into your mind.
BOY - Okay ..... meatloaf.
GIRL - Talk about meatloaf.
BOY - How does your Mother make meatloaf? Mine makes it from the recipe off the back of the tomato paste pasket. It's repulsive.
GIRL - Mine makes it properly, from scratch. With that egg in the middle. Meatloaf only tastes nice if you eat it the minute it comes out of the oven. You can almost feel all the niceness go away as soon as it starts to cool down.
BOY - On `Roseanne' she puts cornflakes in it. Disgusting! Okay. Think of another one.
GIRL - Mice.
BOY - Hey, do you know that mice don't really like cheese ?
GIRL - Really ?
BOY - Yeah. Gives them indigestion.
GIRL - So all our cartoons have being lying to us all along, huh?
BOY - That's probably my biggest fear. That everyone's been lying to us all along.
GIRL - Yeah, just imagine, if one day everything - like all the washing machines and and animals and television sets and stuff - just jumped out and said `SURPRISE !!!'
BOY - You know ... that reminds me of this one time I was at Nimbin McDonalds and this guy sold me a McHappy Meal? It came with this little purple bucket with Grimace on it, making a sandcastle. Anyway, this guy was pretty average looking, he had kind of brown hair about this long (he indicates chin length hair with his hand) But I looked at his name tag and on it - get this - it said `Jesus'!
GIRL - Wow ! Sold a McHappy Meal by Jesus. That is weird. That is majorly weird.(using the Father Steve Martin voice)`The body and blood of Christ - a cheeseburger and small Coke.'
BOY - Kinda interesting though, doncha think ? I mean, what's to say he wasn't the real Jesus?
GIRL - Now that would be ironic. The son of God selling Filet O' Fish and Hot Fudge Sundaes.
BOY - I reckon !
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