An Excerpt from
SOMNIPHOBIA
By
David Bulmer
Darkness
Eerie Music plays (Radiohead etc)
There are a series of different white female shoes placed side by side in a circle around the stage
The GIRL is dressed in a hospital gown and stands in the middle of the circle
Throughout the piece she keeps moving, in a very dancelike way, like she is trying to keep herself awake.
At times the movement is graceful and at others it is chaotic and frenetic. She begins by swaying…
GIRL:
Sleep.
I can’t sleep.
I don’t want to sleep.
Bad things happen when you sleep.
But yet I’m so tired.
I must fight it.
Don’t let me fall…
Somniphobia.
Daddy?
I want you here.
I want you to stay until the night is gone.
Hold my hand.
But Daddy just looks away.
He looks so hard until he can no longer see himself in my room.
Just breathe, he says.
Breathe?
I’ve been noticing little cracks in my bedroom walls. I have to be careful.
They offer windows to my past.
When I look through them I drift through a lot of memories.
Memories about shoes. My Mother’s shoes. The shoes are important.
But I can’t remember why?
I bury myself in them. They are both comforting and cold.
What is the last thing I said to Mother before she went to sleep?
I can’t remember…
She looks through a crack in her room
But I see my Mother is asking me for a cup of tea. But she can never drink it. Her throat has betrayed her. But I boil the water anyway. It gives me something to do.
But now no matter how many times I turn on the kettle only cold water surrounds me.
What’s going on?
There are ghosts Daddy. Ghosts in my bedroom.
But he can’t see them.
Faces that I can’t see, voices that I can’t hear, but they are there.
Whispering to me, just don’t sleep.
Bad things happen when you sleep.
I don’t want to be taken Daddy.
Somniphobia…
Through this crack in the wall I can hear Mother’s feet moving. If I place my eye right up to the wall I can see she’s dancing.
In her ballet shoes…
She dances a balletic movement
The machine hooked up to her blinks a rhythm in time with her feet. She looks immortal. But then she stops. Out of breath.
I’ve always loved those shoes. But she will never let me wear them.
(Mother voice)‘One day you will be big enough for them’.
I keep drifting through these memories.
I drown myself in them…
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY THE
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THIS MONOLOGUE?
Email David Bulmer at
1