This October, ST.ART has compiled its first experimental, dramatic writing collection to bring you Come with Me. Five student playwrights from St Andrews, Stirling, and DePaul University (Chicago, USA) have collaborated to write a short series of one-page plays. The only rule was that every play had to begin with the line “come with me". The result is a wide range of creative interpretations, tones, and situations. This is the second play of the cycle.

Picture sourced from https://goo.gl/U6veMt

PLAY 2

By: Briony Sturgis

Boy and Girl stand back to back centre stage. They are on the phone. Both are staring down reading from pieces of paper they are holding.

BOY: Come with me for fucksake. I don’t see why you’re being so difficult. What have you possibly got in your life right now that you couldn’t have in your life with me here? I thought you were less…stunted than this. This used to be what we dreamed of. We used to lay together flat side by side underneath the same chipped ceiling with the same grotty skylight dreaming of one day reaching all the blue outside that we could both see. That skylight is open now! For both of us!

GIRL: There are open skylights in Scotland too… you know that right?

BOY: Stop being difficult, you agonize me. You know this isn’t about skylights.

GIRL: (distracted) Actually saying that I honestly haven’t seen as many skylights as you would think…

BOY: I don’t have time for this. Look at me. Look. You are staring at an actor now. Do you not understand how big this film is? How many famous people are going to be on the stage? How big of a break I have just got? I’m going to be on stage next to stars like Brad Pitt. Brad fucking Pitt and all I want is for you to be sitting below that stage cheering me on and all you want is to stay in the fucking middle of the fucking-

GIRL: Tungol

BOY: (outraged) What did you just say?

GIRL: Tungol. It means star in Old English. Sorry, carry on…what were you saying?

BOY: Why do you know what star is in Old English?

GIRL: My friend had an Old English test. It was another one of those pointless, rote-learning exercises that takes agonizing amounts of time for really not much gain other than the fact that you can show how much you don’t care for someone’s attitude by translating their words into a language as irrelevant as Old English is. And right now I don’t care for yours at all. I don’t think you understand how happy I am here, or how loved I am, or how large my indent in the sand of St Andrews has become.

BOY: (scoffing) Oh yeah because that’s a great indent to have-

BOY: Did I tell you that I got a pay rise the other day? My first pay rise. And I’m a supervisor now. So I’m a supervisor with a pay rise at Pret, who can make scones. I’m a supervisor with a pay rise at Pret who can make scones and also vegan bread. And lentil soup. I’m a supervisor with a pay rise at Pret who can make scones and lentil soup and vegan bread and who is also an editor for the magazine you’re reading and the head of…

Girl puts the paper down and starts laughing.

BOY: (staring at the piece of paper in his hand) Jesus this Briony girl writing this play really does love you. That is, I’m presuming the girl that what…what was it (squints at the paper) ‘a supervisor at Pret who can…’

GIRL: ‘…make scones and lentil soup etc etc’. Yes, that is based on me, yes.

BOY: So who the fuck is boy huh? Why haven’t you told me about him?