Sweep Under Rug

Welcome to our Featured Play Spotlight. Sweep Under Rugby Lindsay Price is a great conversation starter for both actors and audience. A great piece for actors who want to tackle something outside their comfort zone. Sweep Under Rug envisions a future where struggling families are placed in the “Bobby Sue” program. A “Bobby Sue” is a guardian of sorts, someone who warns against missteps and guides its owners along the “appropriate” path in life. But what happens when people want to think for themselves? Why did we publish this play? Sweep Under Rug is a futuristic “what if” issue play. There’s a lot to unpack and a lot for students to explore onstage and off. There’s costume design, and character specific language. There’s a very specific set and script analysis. It has a small cast, so it doesn’t get done as often as other plays, but it’s important to have plays that present a challenge, a question to answer, and provide a lot to discuss. Let’s hear from the author!1. Why did you write this play? I love looking at issues and exploring them in a theatrical manner. Issue plays must be theatrical. I also love “what if” ideas. “What if” in the future the poor were segregated and monitored by an in-house robot? What does that look like? The play was inspired by some friends who work with refugees and those below the poverty line who want to get out from under their situation but stigma and government red tape hold them back time and time again. 2. Describe the theme in one or two sentences. What if a group of people were told what to do every step of their lives and what if they didn’t want to be told what to do anymore? 3. What’s the most important visual for you in this play? The Bobby-Sue is a characterization of the red-tape holding back those below the poverty line. She is a government placed robot and represents the control and the lack of individual choices of the other characters. She must be a huge presence! 4. If you could give one piece of advice for those producing the play, what would it be? Each character speaks in a specific manner. Spend time analyzing their language. How does the language represent who the character is and what they’re going through in this situation? 5. Why is this play great for student performers? This play takes place in the future, the characters are affected by a specific situation, and that situation also affects character language. There’s a lot here for students! A great character study, a great analysis piece, and a great “what if” discussion starter. Get your copy of Sweep Under Rug right here, right now!Not right for your group right now? Search our play catalogue to find one that your performers will love!

Naming characters. It’s something that I take very seriously as a playwright. Some might say a little too seriously, as I spend an hour on a baby name website instead of actually, you know, writing. But I can’t help it. If the name’s not right, then the character doesn’t start talking and if the character doesn’t start talking how on earth can I write for them? I like my character names to mean something. Even if it’s just a private inside meaning for me. I like looking at the core of the character or a defined character trait and basing the name off of that. I like giving characters cultural names. I like giving names to ensemble/group characters so that the actor isn’t just playing “Number Three” they have a place. They have a home base. Names are a big part of my process, part of how I learn about the characters, how I move them through out the play. A example of this is in Sweep Under Rug. The two girls in the play have specifically chosen names from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Miranda and Ariel. This is their mother’s favourite play. Their mother, who we never meet, is not in a good state. It is suggested that she is a complete failure, a mess. It is also suggested that because she’s poor she is unable to rise about her situation, she can only learn so much. But I wanted to show (in a very subtle way, and perhaps only known to me) that indeed the mother is more than what she is assumed to be by what she named her daughters. So as I said, baby name websites are the bomb. Here’s one.And another. And a third. These have every name you could ever possibly think of. And they often tell you what the name means, a great bonus. Further to that, say you have a character of a certain nationality, you can look up the top ten names from that country. Want a French name? Here you go. If you want a character with a very popular trendy name, you can look that up too. You can look up cultural surnames. Last names are important. They can add another layer to the onion that is your character. In Floating On a Don’t Care CloudI knew I wanted the over-achieving Mya to come from a historically immigrant family and thus not have a standard North American or English name. She ended up as Mya Savakis. Creating a name that goes with theme of your play can be a way into the naming process. In Censorbleep, there are five girls who represent the idea of being clean, and pretty and perfect to the point of being robots. So all their names are all simple, they sound the same and rhyme in a robotic fashion: Mandy, Tandy, Randy, Sandy, Candy. The most fun plays to create names for are those that exist a little left to reality. You don’t need to be bound by that reality. But where do you start? I often look at the primary drive/trait of the character and either look up that word in another language (Google Translate is awesome for that). For example: let’s say I have a character who is brave and I plunk that word into Google translate to change “brave” from English to Spanish. The Spanish word for brave is Valiente which is ok, BUT, in the adjective list there is also Esforzado. When I look at that word, I see the end part “Zado” which I think is an awesome name. I like it so much I might have to come up with a character with that name. Hmmm. Another thing I might do is simply take the word in question and pick out a section in the middle of that word. InLook Me In the Eye, all of the character sames are plucked from the words that make up their core: • VIO comes from Violence • FEA comes from Fear • RUL comes from Rules • REA comes from Reality • TOR comes from History In _Beauty and the Bee _there is a chorus of 10 life-sized bees. They represent the “buzzing” in different characters’ brains. So instead of numbering the bees, they each have a name that has been fragmented from words that mean to think and things that happen in the brain: • COGI – first part of cogitate (means to think) • REVE – french word for dream • MARE – tail end of nightmare • RUMI – first part of Rumination, to ponder • BEAN – is another word for brain And then sometimes it’s as simple as finding the name that sounds the best. I want this character to have a three syllable first name and a hyphenated last name. I want this character to have a quick, blunt name. I want this character to have a funky sounding nickname. I want there to be some alliteration – the main character in Jealousy Jane was easy to come up with because there are only so many one syllable names that begin with J. And I also wanted something a little plain so that she could be jealous of her sister with the “pretty” name.

This week on Spread the Love Lindsay talks about Sweep Under Rug.

Choosing the right monologue can be an agonizing part of the process. How do you know it’s right? And right for you? And right for the situation? The wrong monologue can ruin everything… Monologues are used for a variety of reasons within plays. To share a thought, a story, an emotional outburst. A revealing character moment. A private moment between the character and the audience. Not all monologues make for great competition monologues. You can’t just look for a chunk of text from your favourite character and go to town. Is the monologue story driven, or character driven? Is there an emotional change? What does the character reveal in the monologue? What is the character fighting to achieve? Is there potential action? Here are two monologues. They’re both good pieces but only one of them is right for competition. Which one is it? Answer’s at the bottom! Sweep Under Rug by Lindsay PriceCOUNSELLOR KELLY: Counsellor Kelly here on C-I-T-Y with the evening announcements for Blocks 7A through E. I’m so excited to announce the upcoming plans for the tenth annual Bobby Sue birthday celebration! I can’t wait! Can you believe it’s been ten years? “A Bobby Sue in every home that needs one” has been the motto from the very beginning. We see no reason to change it. When you have a Bobby Sue to tell you what to do, life gets better! Employment is way up; crime is way down. Just the way we like it. Yay! You guys are so good. We’re so proud of you! To help celebrate ten successful years, we’re going to have an extra special celebration. Party hats and noisemakers for everyone! Just remember to treat them nicely, we’ll be collecting them at the end. We’ll do a count down, just like New Years Eve, and we’ll all sing together. Won’t that be fun? And then, very exciting, a confetti cannon! And then we’ll hold a lottery to see who gets cake. I know, I know, I know. Yes it would be great if we could give everyone cake. But in these times, it’s just not possible. What can we do? You don’t have to eat your piece if you get one. You can always share. That would be such a good thing to do! Deck the Stage by Lindsay PriceSHELLEY: You don’t get off that easy. Sit down! I haven’t even started. Sit down. (She holds up a picture) Ask me who’s in the picture. Ask! That’s my dad. Pretty handsome guy don’t you think? Ask where he is. Ask where he is! Come on, you wanted to talk; ask where he is. I don’t know. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that a scream? I don’t know. Two years ago he went to work on Christmas Eve and he never came home. Don’t be. He stole money from his company and ran away with the boss’ secretary. Merry Christmas! That’s our nearest guess anyway. No one knows for sure because there hasn’t been one word. Not one. Not a letter. Not a telegram. Not a postcard. Not an answering machine message. Nothing. He left us with debts up to our ears, and we didn’t even get a goodbye. How’s your dad? Is he alive? Does he talk to you every day? Well good, ’cause let me tell you, around here there isn’t much talking. Around here, we bounce from apartment to apartment and my mom tries to keep working but she’s not very strong. My dad knew that. And he left. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m cold, or distant, or pretentious. But my mind’s a little full ’cause I only got three hours of sleep after working the night shift at the 7-11. And I could really give a crap about Christmas because all it means is that my father didn’t love my mother and he didn’t love me. WHICH IS IT? Sweep Under Rug: There is certainly a clear character in this monologue with a specific voice. While there’s the potential to have fun with the characters, there’s also a lot of plot being set up. There’s more storytelling here than any emotional journey – the character’s emotional state is exactly the same from beginning to end and that’s an issue if you’re looking for something to win a competition. It’s much more about the story and much less about the character. Deck The Stage: This is a character driven emotion based monologue. The character is on a roller-coaster of emotion as she not only confronts the person she’s talking to, but reveals some very deep wounds about her dad. Not only that, but there’s specific clues for how to play the character physically – if she works the night shift at the 7-11, she’s going to be exhausted, frustrated, spitting mad. These are great clues toward an award wining performance.

Our website lists all of our plays with social issue themes but it struck me that they’re only lumped as “issue plays” without a good guide to sorting out which title addresses which issue. So I’ve categorized them for you to hopefully give you a helping hand in your quest to find the perfect script for your school. Check them out. As usual, all of the titles have extensive free sample pages for you to read. I think you’ll find the writing honest, fresh, and believable – three qualities sadly lacking from a lot of “teen-issue” plays out there in the world. Alienation / Feeling Alone in the World• Anonymous by Allison Green • The Art of Rejection: Two One Act Plays by Christian Kiley • A Box of Puppies by Billy Houck • Constantly, Incessantly, All The Time by Billy Houck • Huge Hands by Billy Houck Body Image• Body Body by Lindsay Price • The Four Hags of the Apocalypse Eat Salad at their General Meeting by Lindsay Price • The Battle of Image vs. Girl by Johanna Skoreyko • Hoodie by Lindsay Price • Breathless by Wendy-Marie Martin Censorship• Censorbleep by Lindsay Price Human Rights• Look Me in the Eye by Lindsay Price • Sweep Under Rug by Lindsay Price Racism• Flaky Lips by Lindsay Price • With Liberty and Justice For All by Jeyna Lynn Gonzales • Not Going Anywhere by Emma Fonseca Halverson • The Burgundy Letter by Kirk Shimano • Let Me In by Sholeh Wolpe *** Rumours and Lies• Have You Heard? by Krista Boehnert • The Redemption of Gertie Greene by Taryn Temple Individuality• Hoodie by Lindsay Price • Virtual Family by Christian Kiley • The Happiness Shop by Lindsay Price • A Deep, Poetic Journey Into Something by Forrest Musselman • Carrying the Calf by Shirley Barrie • Monster Problems by Lindsay Price • Stereotype High by Jeffrey Harr • Sixteen in 10 Minutes or Less by Bradley Hayward • Nice Girl by Amanda Murray Cutalo • Pressure by Lindsay Price • They Eat Sunshine, Not Zebras by Dara Murphy • The Super Non-Heroes by Taryn Temple • Smarty Pants by Bradley Hayward Identity• Box by Lindsay Price • Labeled by Lindsay Price • We Are Masks by Lindsay Price • Stressed by Alan Haehnel • Anonymous by Allison Green • Constantly, Incessantly, All The Time by Billy Houck • The Super Non-Heroes by Taryn Temple School Violence• Huge Hands by Billy Houck • Power Play by Lindsay Price • Clowns with Guns (A Vaudeville) by Christopher Evans • The Butterfly Queen by Christian Kiley • Life and Death in an Empty Hallway by Christopher Evans • Water. Gun. Argument. by Alan Haehnel Sexual Abuse• The Waking Moment by Bradley Hayward • Breathless by Wendy-Marie Martin Substance (alcohol & drug) Abuse• Bottle Baby by Lindsay Price • Floating on a Don’t Care Cloud by Lindsay Price • One Beer Too Many by Billy Houck Suicide• The Bright Blue Mailbox Suicide Note by Lindsay Price • Chicken. Road. by Lindsay Price • The Butterfly Queen by Christian Kiley Teen Pregnancy• The Pregnancy Project by Lindsay Price • Among Friends and Clutter (one scene) by Lindsay Price Illness/Health• Chemo Girl by Christian Kiley • The Other Room by Christian Kiley • Red Rover by Christian Kiley • Waiting Room by Christian Kiley • Breathless by Wendy-Marie Martin • Shreds and Patches by Robert Wing • Inanimate by Christian Kiley • Constantly, Incessantly, All The Time by Billy Houck Depression/Anxiety• darklight by Lindsay Price • Fidget by Bradley Hayward • Among Friends and Clutter (one scene) by Lindsay Price • Constantly, Incessantly, All The Time by Billy Houck • who are we, who we are by Forrest Musselman Bullying• Finishing Sentences by Scott Giessler • Funhouse by Lindsay Price • Power Play by Lindsay Price • The Redemption of Gertie Greene by Taryn Temple • Sixteen in 10 Minutes or Less by Bradley Hayward • Carrying the Calf by Shirley Barrie Divorce• Split by Bradley Hayward Gender• Life, Off Book by Scott Giessler • Anonymous by Allison Green • Baalzebub by Rachel Atkins (Baalzebub – One-Act Version here) • Completely, Absolutely Normal: Vignettes About LGBTQ+ Teens by Bradley Walton • Finding Jo March by Laramie Dean • Thought Traps by Lindsay Price Empathy• Discovering Rogue by Christian Kiley • Boat by Lindsay Price • We Are Masks by Lindsay Price • The Butterfly Queen by Christian Kiley Dependence on Technology• Virtual Family by Christian Kiley • Inanimate by Christian Kiley