CHARGE

A monologue from the play by Eric Kaiser


  • NOTE: This monologue is reprinted with the author's permission. All inquiries should be directed to the author's representative at: debrah.kaiserhouse@gmail.com
  • PIERRE: Look, I don't need you or anyone else to tell me about me. I don't need you to think that without your help I wouldn't be where I am now. I can do fine without your help, I got a GED, I went to a community college with money I earned at a warehouse, I didn't go to Harvard, I didn't get a scholarship and I'll be goddamned if you think you can take any credit for where I am today. [Pause.] When I was a boy, I lived in a bad place. Broken down cars, broken down refrigerators and broken down lives were on half of the front lawns of my little street. Well my mother planted a garden. She wanted people to see color before they went to work. She wanted to send the message out that beauty can grow where it wants. She would work from 6am-5pm, she would come home and cook me and my siblings dinner, help us with our homework. She was pissed off half the time and tired the rest, but we ate and got our homework done. [Pause.] When we went to bed she went out to that garden for hours fixing it up. Pissed off and tired. But it was worth it all for five minutes of beauty at the start of the day. [Pause.] Then, whatever and whoever drove on to the garden crashed in the side of our room, and looted what they could. My mother fixed up the room, fixed up the garden. But she was forced to cover it up with a giant ugly iron fence. [Pause.] And what do you think that told all the people driving to work each day. Beauty can't be shared. Beauty is a commodity. Beauty is property. And every day from then on they saw that fence, and all the flowers jailed and wanting. [Pause.] I want to free beauty, free hope. I want you to be able to see beauty also. But we gonna get there together, you ain't controlling me, I aint controlling you. Got it?

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