z

Young Writers Society


E - Everyone

Ah! Shingles! (editing in progress)

by HolographicLadybug


Characters

Thomas

A boy of around eleven years old.

Yousef

Another boy, also around eleven. He is Thomas’ friend.

Mom

Thomas’ middle-aged mother.

Laney

Thomas’ younger sister of ten years of age.

Man

A voice.

Scene One

(Curtains open. There is a table center stage and two chairs seated at it. There is a set of stairs stage left that lead offstage. Mom is sitting at the table, facing the audience as she reads a newspaper with the headlines: Roof Tiles Going Missing and Culprit Still on the Loose. Thomas walks in left, holding a cellphone to his ear.)

Thomas: (Talking to the phone) Sure, let me ask my mom first. (Takes phone away from his ear) Mom?

Mom: (Doesn’t look up from her paper) M-hm?

Thomas: Can Yousef come over?

Mom: (Waves her hand in a non-caring motion) Sure.

Thomas: (Puts phone up to ear) Yeah, you can. … Yeah, ok. … Right. See you soon. (Hangs the phone up. Mutters) Why do I even ask you? You never listen. (Walks quickly off stage right)

(We hear the door opening and boots stepping onto the floor.)

Yousef: (Offstage) Hi.

Thomas: (Offstage) Hey. Feel free to take your boot off. (We hear boots falling to the ground)

Yousef: (Offstage, but his voice gets louder as if approaching) It’s been forever since we’ve hung out.

Thomas: (Coming onstage with Yousef) Yeah. Long grounding sucks.

Yousef: What exactly did you do again?

Thomas: (Shrugs) I kept two rocks from the lawn that I thought were pretty and that was considered 'collecting'.

Yousef: Glad you’re free. First week of freedom. How does that feel?

Thomas: Great. (They stop stage right) Mom’s so strict that I can never leave.

Yousef: How do you go to the bathroom, then? How about eating?

Thomas: I was lucky enough to have Laney bring me some provisions. (Mom’s fist bangs onto the table and she grits her teeth. Thomas jumps and shifts uncomfortably, realizing that his mom was still at the table.)

Yousef: (Holding up his phone, eager to change the subject) I can show you that app I was talking about.

Thomas: Right. (He rubs his hands together eagerly) But first, there’s something I really want to show you.

Yousef: (Nods) Alright. What is it?

Thomas: It’s really cool, but I can’t ruin the surprise yet. (He grabs Yousef’s hand and starts to cross over to the stairs.) Come on.

Mom: (Looks up from the newspaper as soon as Thomas and Yousef are near the table) What are you talking about, Thomas? There’s nothing interesting in your room.

Thomas: (Stops. Bluntly) Thanks, mom. (He continues hurriedly with Yousef towards the stairs. As he climbs them, there is a brief blackout.)

Scene Two

(Lights are back up on the same scene. Yousef rushes down the stairs.)

Yousef: Mrs. Carter! Mrs. Carter!

Mom: (Turns a page of the paper, not even looking at her son’s friend) Yeah?

Yousef: It’s Thomas!

Mom: What about him?

Yousef: It’s awful!

Mom: (Sets paper down. Slightly frustrated) What is it?

Yousef: See it for yourself! I can’t bear it!

Mom: (Gets up) Ok, now I’m somewhat worried. You carrying on like this… It’s… Concerning. (She shivers) Tell, me Yousef.

Yousef: Really, you must see—

Mom: (Sighs) JUST TELL ME!

Yousef: He’s got shingles!

Mom: (After a stunned silence) What?

Yousef: Thomas. He’s got shingles.

(Mom runs up the stairs. Yousef waits a few seconds before following her. Blackout.)

Scene Three

(Lights up on Thomas’ bedroom. There is a messy bed stage right, as well as a nightstand and an overfilled bookshelf next to it. Next to a window center-stage is a pile of thing rectangles and squares. There is also another window stage left. Thomas is nowhere to be found. Mom and Yousef run on stage left.)

Mom: Where… Where’s Thomas? (She walks over to the stage-left window and looks out of it) Well, he didn’t jump. (She spends a few more moments looking out the window before turning back to Yousef) Where is he? (Threateningly) Where is he? I don’t want to get charged.

Yousef: (Points a shaky finger at the pile of thin parallelograms) Th… Th…

Mom: (Turns to the pile) There? You cannot be serious, Yousef.

Thomas: (Bursts from the pile and throws the squares up like confetti) Shingles!

Mom: Shingles? Roof shingles? (She sighs in frustration) You have got to be kidding me!

Thomas: (Holding up some in his hands and some of them slip through his finger like water) Shingles…

Mom: Thomas. What have I told you? No collecting! (She walks over to the pile and begins to pick some of them up) That means emotional attachment. And emotional attachment gets you nowhere.

Thomas: (Growls and snatches the shingles away) Mine!

Mom: (Backs away) Thomas, y-you’ve never acted like this before. I don’t like it.

Thomas: Leave me and me shingles alone, mother. (He holds one up to his cheek and caresses it) Leave us in peace! (He looks at one of the shingles next to him. To the shingle) What’s that? You wanna play warrior? (He picks it up and smiles malevolently at Mom) Well alright, then. (He throws it at her, but she dodges. Thomas lets out a frustrated cry)

Mom: So that’s what you’ve been doing up here all this time? Collecting roof shingles?

Thomas: You shouldn’t have grounded me for a year and a half. You shouldn’t have had children if you weren’t going to pay attention to them. How do you think I actually fed myself and went to the bathroom? Not Laney! She wouldn’t do that for me. Stealing and sneaking into other people’s houses. I spend a lot of time on roofs. That is what I must do to survive. My sister doesn’t care.

Mom: Well you’re going to be grounded for a lot longer than that. I’m barring these windows and throwing out every single one of these shingles. (Thomas throws another shingle at her. She yelps and dodges. She and her son stare at each other for a few tense seconds before she storms off stage right.)

Thomas: (Eyes Yousef. In a demonic voice) Any problems, friend? If not, I suggest you leave.

Yousef: (Runs off stage right as fast as he can)

Laney: (Enters stage right) I don’t know what Mom was talking about. They’re just roof shingles.

Thomas: (Growls) MIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNEEEEEEEEE!

Laney: (Frightened) Now I see. (Runs off stage right)

(Thomas buries himself in his roof shingles as the lights fade. After a minute, we hear sirens and shouts, some of a man’s and some of Thomas’. We hear thrashing and shingles being thrown against a wall. At last, the noises fade and the sirens pick up again and get farther away. We hear Laney sighing.)

Laney: Good riddance. She warned us what happens when we get attached to something.

(A door is shut and the audience is wrapped in a few moments of silence.)

End of play


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396 Reviews


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Reviews: 396

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Mon Feb 22, 2016 5:57 pm
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Pompadour wrote a review...



Hi there! Pomp here for a review.

I'll be reviewing as I read, with a general summation of my thoughts on this at the end. Please bear with me.

On the beginning: is the first scene set in the kitchen? I assume it is, because of the choice in furniture, but it's good to specify the setting in a playscript--if only for the actors' sakes than anyone else's.

...as she reads a newspaper with the headlines: Pieces of Roofs Going Missing and Culprit Still on the Loose.


~ Uh, that's an odd headline. Normally, headlines are full of jazz; they tend to be pretty concise and snappy. I don't see how missing ... shingles? tiles? (what do you mean by 'pieces of roofs'?) would make the headlines, honestly, unless the town the characters live in is terribly boring and small. The nature of this town remains unmentioned so far, and it's not a very convincing entry into the play, as a whole. Stealing roof shingles is a crime, yes, albeit a petty one. But is it one that would be on the front page? I sincerely doubt it. I think this might be more convincing if the character (Mom) was mumbling bits of the passage out to herself, or even ranting to her cat or whatever. As it is, Mom has very little character-development, and her interacting with her surroundings might help flesh her out some more.*

*By 'interacting with surroundings', I am, by no means, encouraging a whole load of stage directions, although these, too, are extremely helpful if done well. (An example is Ayckbourn's /Absurd Person Singular/, in which one of the characters has absolutely no dialogue but is the centre of attention--this, due to the way she interacts with her surroundings.)

Also, I find the way Thomas presents his mother + her actual actions to be at odds with one another. She is first presented as uncaring and cold, yet she appears to have an intense interest in what her son is hiding in his room. Why is she so strict with her kid if she doesn't care for him? Wouldn't she be far more likely to let him roam about as he pleases, if she's so lax and inattentive towards him? And, if she is as strict as she's made out to be, grounding him for a year-and-a-half as she has, wouldn't she also keep tabs on if he's abiding to the punishment? Wouldn't she have come across his collection of shingles sooner? I'm finding it really hard to understand what's going on here, mostly because the way everything's been played out is so utterly unconvincing. Thomas' mum does not come across as uncaring in the slightest, from what you've portrayed of her. She's simply reading the paper. Heck, she even answers Thomas in the affirmative when he asks her if his friend can come over. You want to show me a mother who doesn't care for her kid? Expand on scene one. Give us a situation to work with. Give us harsher dialogue and actual referral to past events to connect to. Convince me of his mum's nonchalance--because your climax is going to remain a flat tyre until you do the aforementioned successfully.

I can say the same for the rest of the play. Laney is just a stock character, and Yousef has a potentially-enlightening-but-what-fails-to-be-enlightening conversation with Thomas. I actually like Yousef best, because he is acting in a believable way. I mean, who wouldn't run from a friend if he was talking to you like that, am I right?

Another thing--if Thomas is eleven years old, why is he accusing his mum for not feeding them or taking them to, er, relieve themselves? His sister shows to signs of being neglected, and remember--the audience has to see the signs of abuse instead of hearing Thomas simply rant about them. Your stage directions is the juicy fillet in the sandwich; the dialogue is the marination and the props are the toasted French bread on the top. I don't want to be told things. I want them to be implied. Subtlety is an art.

I like how you integrate offstage action into what's happening onstage. It's very neat, and definitely something I forget a lot if I'm ever experimenting with scripts, mostly because it's hard to keep the audience in pace with the events that're going on behind the stage. In this case, it wasn't so much as offstage action as events taking place in sheer darkness, but I liked how you managed to pull that ending off.

What I was not a fan of was the resolution.

Re-work this. There's potential. Work on making your dialogue less blatant--take a look at this article that talks about how you can stuff your dialogue to the seams with characterisation and other such stuffs~ I'm keen on finding out WHY, exactly, Mom has issues with developing emotional attachments. A cause to the effect, no? I'd also suggest to work on the pacing; where the script stands, right now, things move a little too fast, and it's hard to develop any sympathies for the characters because we know them for such a little while.

'Script' is a category I don't really get to see much work in, so it's always a pleasure to pick something up from this area. Keep writing! Keep it up!

I hope this helped. Holler if you have any questions~

~Pomp






Thank you so much for the review! I'll make sure to make necessary edits, additions, etc. I will even expand scene one. I will definitely work on the necessary improvements. :)



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Points: 4250
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Sun Feb 21, 2016 4:02 pm
RubyRed wrote a review...



Hello, HolographicLadybug. This work was marvelous! I really enjoyed it. The dialog was cool and I thought everything to be realistic. I was wondering about the shingles though. Why didn't he get so attached to them and why is his mother so harsh? I was also wondering why they were so mean to Thomas. I don't have any tips or nitpicks for you but I would say try to make the reasons why people do things in your story evident.

Keepwriting and never get discouraged!






Some mothers really just do not care about their children. Thomas' mom grounds her children for so long mainly because she doesn't want to have to put up with them.
She also doesn't really want her children to get attached to anything because I was hinting at a past, tragic experience. She cares that Thomas had shingles (which she first thought was the disease) because she didn't want to catch it. I realize that that part could be a bit of a flaw to my script, but it's inferred, so I wasn't going to worry about it.

Also, what do you mean by "why they were so mean to Thomas." If you could clarify that for me, that would be great. :)
Thanks for the review.



RubyRed says...


I asked why they were mean to him.





Oh! Thanks. :)



RubyRed says...


You're welcome.




We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot