Telephone

The thirteen cast members stand in a formation facing the audience. From stage right to stage left, they are actors A through M. I use the pronoun ‘he’ throughout for lack of a gender neutral pronoun but every character is gender neutral.

A: (addressing the audience) The game of telephone.

Quickly, A whispers something to B, who whispers it to C, et cetera, all the way down the line. It should go quickly enough to have the appearance of a wave. When M receives the wave of whispers, he says:

M: ‘Elephants get flat.’

A: I said, ‘Ella Fitzgerald’s pet cat.’

Everybody chuckles for a second, and then the wave begins again.

M: ‘A dove got in my parasail.’

A: I said, ‘I’d love to live in Paraguay.’

Everybody chuckles briefly, people mutter things like “that made sense!”, and the wave begins again.

M: ‘Penis.’

A: I…what?

Nobody is smiling. Everybody looks tense.

M: I heard ‘penis.’

A: That sounds nothing like what I said.

F: What did you say?

A: ‘I didn’t do my chemistry homework.’

K: What else is new?

A: No, that’s what I said to start the game.

K: (to L) He’s a terrible lab partner.

There is an awkward pause.

D: Well, that sounds absolutely nothing like ‘pe—’

A: Alright, who changed it?!

H: Aw, come on, we don’t have to—

A: No! Somebody changed it, on purpose! Somebody ruined the game.

Everybody looks down toward M. M gets a bit defensive.

M: Hey, don’t look at me; I heard ‘penis.’ (looks at L) He told me ‘penis!’

L: Me, too—I heard it, too.

The half of the line from G to M all nod and point fingers accusingly.

G: (sees H pointing at him) Nuh-uh! ‘Ida and Mike’s three-seater Hummer.’ That’s what I said. No freakin’ way you heard the…goddamn…male genitalia in that. There are far too many syllables.

Everybody is glaring at H.

H: No! I distinctly heard…you coughed! I couldn’t tell what syllable was the phrase and what was phlegm coming up.

Pause.

A: Bullshit.

H: …Alright, I changed it. It was me.

Everybody looks down, frustrated. A makes a big show of turning his back to the rest of the line, folding his arms, and pouting visibly. Suddenly, A crosses over to H, breaking formation for the first time.

A: Well, what the hell!

H: I thought it was funny.

B: Come on…

I: I’m out of here. (starts to leave)

Slowly, over the course of what transpires next, everybody in the line except A and H agrees and subtly leaves one-by-one. A and H begin to circle each other slowly.

A: It’s juvenile. Not only does your infantile sense of humor leave something to be desired; you have the need to take a constructive group activity and pull the center of focus to yourself, disrupting everybody’s fun for the sake of a cheap laugh. Which you never actually got, might I add.

H: Oh, lighten up! I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I have the maturity level of a five-year-old.

A: That’s no secret.

H: Shut it. Look, buddy, if I had my way, I’d scream bodily functions and parts of the anatomy until I went hoarse. What, do you think our oppressive Puritan society accepts that? I have no room to express myself. I exert no control over my surroundings; my surroundings control me. I live in perpetual fear of doing or saying something wrong, of disturbing or disappointing people.

A: You did something wrong. You disappointed twelve other people.

H: Don’t tell me that, jerkoff. When we play this idiotic game, I finally get a chance to influence something. I can manipulate what the person next to me says. I can make potty-talk come right out of his mouth without revealing my primal urge to be obscene. All I have to do is whisper with diction and clarity, and the game becomes mine.

A: You don’t display any control when you do that, you naïve twerp. (A starts to shove H repeatedly.) What about the self-control it takes to stop yourself from hijacking a game, a game into which twelve other people have invested their precious minutes, for your own neurotic amusement? That’s how you reaffirm your humanity, you tool. Not by telling your neighbor to say ‘penis.’ (A starts to shove G harder.) Get out of here! No longer will we let your mild psychosis ruin our innocent fun! Split! Scoot! Leave us in peace!

H: Fine, I’m going, I’m going. (turns to leave briskly, swatting away A’s last attempts at pushes, shoves, and slaps. At the perimeter of the stage, he says:) I’ll be back. I promise. You think you can live out your happy little life in isolation from people like me. We need you. We feed on you. (Slight pause) That’s what she said.

H exits.

J: (standing at the perimeter of the stage) Dude, you’re a bully.