Play: Ten Till Trisha

Ten Till Trisha

Setting: A graveyard. We are placed in front of Queen Trisha’s burial plot.

Characters:

Tracy: A down-to-earth worker. Friends with Queen Trisha.

Mark: A fop-ish/metrosexual-ish character who believes himself to be in love with Queen Trisha. Seemingly British.

Dave: A noble under the rule of Queen Trisha. Has aspirations to steal her power. Commanding voice.








(Scene opens on three individuals: Tracy, a loyal worker; Dave, a politician; Mark, a courter to Trisha. Tracy is digging up a grave marked “Queen Trisha: I stepped out for a few. BBL”All three are dressed in voodoo tribal charms and simplistic facepaint. Mark is writing furiously on a sheet of paper.)

Dave: This is completely and utterly foolish! You’ve dug far more than six feet and there’s no sign of her!

Tracy: I’m nine feet in, sir! Royalty is buried atleast ten feet underground. Don’t worry. She’ll be alive and kicking in less than a half hour.

Mark: (talking in a British accent while writing the note) My dearest Trisha; eyes of pearls, snow white skin, immaculate heart with the with a fire who’s warmth you only share with me. I think of you dear. Constantly. Let me embue all of these words with my essence. Let me be all of them so that you may comfort with them. So that you may console with them, so that I may haunt your presence through the ink on this paper. I am lost. I am heartbreak without you. My love, I will die drowned soon if I see you not. Drowned in the memories which I only share with you.

Dave: That’s horrible!

Mark: Quiet!

Dave: Just listen to what you’re writing! It’s wishy-washy poetry crap.

Mark: Dave…

Dave: It sounds like a suicide letter!

Mark: Dave!

Dave: It sounds like emo poetry!

Mark: Dave.

Dave: What?

Mark: I am not emo.

Dave: Well…

Mark: This is from the heart!

Dave: Who says emo kids don’t speak from the heart?

Mark: Um,

Dave: Emo is short for “emotional”

Mark: It’s the connotation.

Dave: Whatever.

(pause)

Dave: Why are you writing a love letter to a dead person anyway?

Tracy: Well, she’s coming back.

Dave: Ahem…

Tracy: Yes?

Dave: You’d do well to speak her full name and title when you speak to your commanding officer. Her name is Queen Trisha, Lord of all of the lands of New Dumshire, including the hills of Carbottom, the marshes of Hackysac and the dunes of Turnstile, but not including the lakes of Berkenstock or lower laying territories….expired

Mark: Yes, yes. That is all good and well, but you’d do best to remember that she is the beloved and chosen of me, Sir Mark Mark the second esquire, twice removed! She is my honeypie. The tug of my boat, the cattle of my car. Happy of my Days! Gerry of my mandering!

Tracy: She goes by Trish.

Dave: What you will, but know that I am not entirely sure this “resurrection process” will work in the first place!

Tracy: Then why did you agree to it?

Dave: Oh, do you force my hand? I’ll play along…There’s not much of a difference if you know anyway. Because she holds very secret information to me becoming lord of these lands, King David Thurgrove Musgrove Cocksgrove Grovesgrove…

Tracy: Or Dave….with all due respects.

Mark: Or fool! Because you may believe that your political wiles will gain you the secret information you need to gain the throne, but I know better!

Dave: Oh really?

Mark: Why, yes.

Dave: Definitely?

Tracy: Presumably.

Dave: And why, pray tell.

Mark: Because, tell me, sir, where is the love? Not from your lips or your eyes, but from my heart. Your political aspirations do not hold a candle, a thimble, or even a knobby nosed button to the love me and my beloved Trisha share.

Dave: You think that love is enough? What about politics, dear fellow? You cannot raise a society on love alone.

Tracy: Good point.

Dave: What gives you the right to interject your opinion into our little parle’?

Mark: Yes, what makes you worthy of standing at this threshold of death with us? I think we have deduced why the two of us are really here, but tell us, you postulant pebble of a plebian, what motives drive you to helping do this treacherous deed of raising the dead?

Tracy: Look, guys. You obviously don’t know how to perform ancient voodoo rituals, and I do. Anyway, she’s my friend…and I kind of miss her. Isn’t that enough of a reason?

Dave: Preposterous! Everyone has a motive!

Mark: Undeniably!

Dave: So what is yours? I see the way you have eyed us with your eyes! Oh, your eyes! Eyeing us with all of your eyeing abilities!

Tracy: I’m in a hole! How am I going to eye you from down here?

Dave: Don’t play coy!

Mark: And tell us, sweet friend, why do the two of us have beers in our hand when you have none? Do you despise our alcoholic admirations?

Tracy: Nope.

(Mark and Dave each grab Tracy by a shoulder and hoist her out of the grave.)

Mark: Oh really? Then have a beer!

Tracy: I’m good. I had a few before you guys came.

Dave: Prove it!

Mark: Yes, prove it!

Dave: Breathe into this face of mine!

(she does)

Well, she’s not lying, certainly.

Mark: Truly?

Dave: Apparently. She even tried to mask it with Winterfresh gum.

Mark: Winterfresh? Tell us, vile villain, what are your plans with this breath, fresh as the Winters?

Tracy: I like gum.

(pause)

Dave: Fine.

Mark: Fine!

Dave: But let me tell you, your fine-ness is finite

Mark: Finitely finite!

(Tracy slowly enters the grave again, pulling out a cellphone.)

Dave: Because I see your frightened expression on your face, and that is where you stumble! And when I find out your secret plot, your ploy, your planning, rest assured that justice will be served with a cold platter of vengeance, a side order of retribution, a- (cell phone rings) What-what? It is her majesty! A CALL FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! Quick, everyone act like I am in charge! (picks up phone) Yes greetings your majesty. (to Mark and Tracy) Friends, fellows, followers, fickle fleeting fiends of my ffffrolicking fffffanciful fffffffolly, I come here today to…(into phone) What? Oh yes….yes….no….Really?....yes-well, really?....If Your Majesty wishes it. Tracy!

Tracy: Yes?

Dave: (Hands the phone to Tracy) She wants to talk to you.

Tracy: (into phone) Hey Trish…..mhmmm….mhmm…..okay….yeah, sure, I’ll tell him. Kay, bye. (throws the phone back up to Dave)

Dave: What did she say? Please do tell. She commended my work, didn’t she? She thought I was doing a grand job, yes? A superb job! Hurry with the news! She wanted to meet with me personally in her chambers I bet. She wants to make me a sergeant, a general…a king! Tell me what she has said, I command you!

Tracy: She said that she’ll be ready to come back in a few. Oh, and also she says that you are to be executed for embezzling funds.

Dave: What! That has to be a joke! How did she find out? Cosmetics are expensive! I bet you told her! You did, didn’t you? Vengeance will be mine, infidel! But not yet…I must plan escape first so that I may retreat to a secret enclave where I can fully ponder what mine actions will be to create your demise! So now (jumps onto tombstone) I bid you adieu!

(Dave jumps into the open grave. He screams as he falls down the grave. His cry digresses until you hear a small splat, deep within the gravel. Tracy and Mark look into the grave.)

(Pause)

Mark: An enemy has been vanquished! Notice, if you will. Peer with your eyes. Open your hearts to the bleakness that is death which has been laid in front of us! Victory! We have defeated Dave!

Tracy: Great….so I guess you can take away that body when you’ll be leaving then.

Mark: What? Of course not, pissant! I will stand my ground, right in this very spot until my beloved Trisha returns to me! (pause) I see what you’re trying to do here. You’re trying to make me leave!

Tracy: Yep.

Mark: Don’t try to deny it! I know it to be true! Why, I don’t know. But it will surface. Like the waves of the Libatic Sea, it will surface!

Tracy: Fine…whatever…

Mark: What could it be…Halitosis? (checks breath) No… Do I have a lazy eye that is unappeasing to look at? I’d like to think not! Do I have a boogie? What could it be? Unless….unless you have an attraction to my mistress! Speak, vile fiend! I have found you out!

Trisha: Nooooo. I don’t swing that way, sir.

Mark: Do you not swing in the direction of beauty? True, unfathomed beauty? Beauty that shakes the heavens, so that it’s golden apples may rain down upon the earth?

Tracy: Wait wait wait wait wait…Did she actually like this type of talk when she was alive?

Mark: I’d imagine she would. Why wouldn’t she?

Tracy: Well, how did she act when you talked to her like that?

Mark: Well…I haven’t actually ever talked to her.

Tracy: Oh really?

Mark: Don’t mock me!

Tracy: No, no. I’m just saying that if you’ve never talked to her, how do you know she’d like it.

Mark: Because it’s poetic!

Tracy: Yeah…but don’t you think it’s a bit excessive?

Mark: Excuse me?

Tracy: I mean, sometimes brevity is gold.

Mark: Yes, such a thing would be said by such a mop-headed malcontent!

Tracy: Okay, well fine. We’ll put it to the test. (guides Mark the open grave.) Practice here. You see, the spirits of the dead can hear your call from an open grave. It has to deal with some open portal into this world type of thing. Anyway, if Trisha likes what she hears from beyond the grave, it will be enough to wake her from her death spell and you will be forever hitched!


Mark: Well, fine! (Mark wanders around the grave, immersed in his own speech. Tracy gets in position to knock Mark into the grave, but is foiled by Mark spinning around towards her in his grand display for Trisha.)
My Mistress! Butterfly of my heart? Bubbly little candy cane of my Christmas tree of love. Pumpkin of Aphrodite’s pumpkin patch. Cupid’s Cupid-y arrow of Cupid love! Pretty pink princess of my pastel painted heart….

(Mark takes a wrong step and plummets into the grave. Tracy gleefully hops onto the top of the tombstone and claps her hands. A beam of light shoots out of the grave. Mark and Dave climb halfway out of the grave with ghostly looks on their faces.)

Dave: E-

Mark: Gads!
Dave and Mark: We’re dead!

Dave: Deceased!

Mark: Done for!

Dave: Defunct!

Mark: Departed!

Tracy: You’re MINE!

(Tracy does a grand gesture towards the grave. Mark and Dave scream girlishly)

Mark: Does this mean that you are indeed-

Dave: Without a shadow of a shade of a doubt

Mark: Truly and undeniably-

Dave and Mark: QUEEN TRISHA?

Tracy: Whatever, I don’t know, I kinda like the name Tracy more. Look, I’m just doing you guys a favor. Money, power, love, romance, language, political horsewash—Why even care? Look, you’re dead, like I’m dead, like we’re all going to be dead. So, you know what…why even worry about it? I don’t. Not at all. Look, all I worry about is how I’m going to play Monopoly when it’s just me in a grave by myself and look, I solved that problem pretty succinctly I think. So comeon! (Jumps into grave.) I’m the racecar!

(Mark and Dave look at each other like they are about to say something, hesitate for the other to speak, then descend back into the grave. Blackout.)