Great Falls: A Play in Several Towns
by Lee Blessing
Character Break Down:
Money Man: Male, older, most likely middle aged
Bitch: Female, a week from turning 18
The play opens with Money Man and Bitch driving in a car. They are somewhere in the midwest. Their relationship is unclear at first. Money Man is insistent on having a good time with Bitch, taking her out for a talk. Bitch is angry, saying that Monkey Man will be raped in prison for kidnapping. Money Man at first ignores her, and then insists that he's not kidnaping her, saying that they are on a drive for a talk. As the scene progress, Bitch calls her mother telling her that she's been taken by Monkey Man. Monkey Man takes the phone away from her, and talks to her mother. We learn that Money Man is not actual "kidnapping" Bitch per-say, but really did just want to talk. He and Bitch have an ambiguous relationship. At this point, we're not sure what it is, but he clearly knows her and her mother very well. His relationship with Bitch's mother is strained. Bitch says several times that Monkey Man is not her father, and accuses him of having lusted after her. Their relationship is very strained. We find out that Monkey is actually Bitch's father, of some sort.
In Thermopiles:
Later in a motel room that Bitch and Monkey Man share:
Bitch asks Monkey Man if he wants the bed by the door so she can't "escape". Monkey Man tells her to pick a bed, and she does. The stage directions leave it open as to which bed she decides to take.
Monkey Man asks Bitch if he can use her real name, and she says to just call her Bitch. Bitch talks to her mother on the phone without him in the room. She lies to her mother saying that they are sleeping in different rooms. She also tells her mom that he's been spending way too much money on her, trying to buy her love.
Monkey Man tries to get Bitch excited to see the different sites of America that he saw with his parents when he was little.
Later in the scene we find out that Monkey Man is Bitch's step father. While Bitch is the shower, Monkey Man rehearses his side of a conversation that he plans to have with Bitch. The conversation is about why he and her mother divorced.
Bitch comes out from the shower only wearing panties and a towel, accusing him again of being a pervert.
In Yellowstone:
Monkey Man tries to get Bitch excited to see the geyser, but she is uninterested and pulls a blanket over her head.
In Anaconda:
At picnic table off the road.
Bitch is writing in her note book. Monkey Man accidentally calls Bitch "insane" for pulling a blanket over her head, and we learn that there is a lot of history behind that word, without learning what the history is.
We learn that Monkey Man is a writer. He writes novels to make money, and wishes we could go back to poetry. His book is rather successful.
As Money Man talks about going to these great American landmarks with his parents, Bitch angrily says that she can’t ever enjoy these places because she doesn’t have two parents and never will. We also learn that Bitch’s brother hates Monkey Man, and cut up all the pictures of him in the house.
Bitch presses Monkey Man for details of his affairs. He had 3 over 8 years. He began to cheat on Bitch’s mother because of the lack of sex in their marriage. After going into an awkward amount of detail of his affairs and his sexual relationship with his ex-wife, Monkey Man blows up saying that it’s not his fault that both Bitch and her mother were sexual abused.
In Kalispell:
Bitch is driving.
They are on their way to see some glaciers when Bitch tells Monkey Man is pregnant and her mother doesn’t know.
(Said to Monkey Man, not acted out) Bitch doesn’t know who the father is. Because she was sexual abused by her father, she doesn’t feel comfortable being intimate with her boyfriend. She decided she would just sleep with a random guy to get over it. The boy in her class she picks gets her drunk and high, and rapes her with his friend. After they clean her up and send her home, and she calls her boyfriend.
Angry, sad, and hurt he tries to understand why she did that. Bitch feels bad for him and has sex with him.
Therefore she doesn’t know who the father is. Bitch asks Monkey Man to go to an abortion clinic with her. Monkey Man is resistant.
In Great Falls:
Monkey Man and Bitch are getting ready for the abortion. Monkey Man takes the keys from Bitch. She becomes angry thinking he will take her away from the abortion clinic. She begins to yell that he’s kidnapping her, alerting the police.
The two of them are questions by the police. They are on opposite sides of the stage, answering inaudible questions from police officers who are not seen. Monkey Man and Bitch cannot “hear" each other.
Next scene they are at the abortion clinic. Bitch tries to be nice, and make a depressing situation not so bad. Monkey Man -for once- isn’t in the mood to talk, and begins to cry as he thinks about what his step-daughter is about to do.
In Miles City:
After the abortion. Bitch and Monkey Man are at a hotel. Bitch is on the bed with a bad fevor. She is hallucinating. She keeps saying that her kid is haunting her, and that he will haunt her forever for killing him.
Monkey Man tries to help her, but Bitch accuses him manic-ly of raping her, and that he raped her. Monkey Man wants to take her to a doctor, but she doesn’t want people to know she had an abortion. She also doesn’t want to go back to the clinic because her boy’s ghost will be there waiting for her.
She pases out.
Next scene. They’re back from the doctor’s. Bitch had chlamydia. No one knew because one of the rapists probably gave it to her. She is ok and cured.
Monkey Man presses Bitch to tell him why she refereed to her unborn child as a “he” and a “boy”. She tells him that she saved up a $1,000 for something else and used it to get blood work done.
Monkey Man presses Bitch, and becomes worried that she only aborted her fetus because it was male. Bitch explodes, confirming Monkey Man’s concerns that she aborted her male child because of how she has been emotionally and sexually abused by men.
In Fermont:
They are pulled over on the side of the road. Bitch gets out of the car, looking as if she had been sleeping. They’re less than an hour away from Bitch’s home.
Monkey Man decides this is the time to part. He gives her the car, saying there’s no strings attached. Bitch doesn’t want him to go. Bitch tries to give him a poem she wrote but Monkey Man doesn’t want it.
Bitch calls him “Dad”.
Monkey Man corrects her “Stepdad. Ex. Monkey Man”.
As Bitch leaves Monkey Man calls out “Thank you!”
He walks in the opposite direction of the car.
Lights fade.
End
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