Lighten Up Read online

  Lighten Up was first produced by Bali Padda and Griffin Independent at SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney, on 2 December 2016, with the following cast:

  SANDY Katie Beckett

  JOHN GREEN Nicholas Brown

  BRONWYN Vivienne Garrett

  LIVVY / MERLE OBERON / HEATHER Julie Goss

  ANIL / GUILLAUME / MANA / Sam McCool

  DOCTOR / INDIAN PRESS PERSON 2

  JANELLE / GAV / RECEPTIONIST / Bishanyia Vincent

  RENEE / CITY OF SYDNEY PRODUCER /

  INDIAN PRESS PERSON 1

  Producer, Bali Padda

  Director and Dramaturg, Shane Anthony

  Director’s Attachment, Hannah Tonks

  Set and Costume Designer, Tobhiyah Stone Feller

  Lighting Designer, Christopher Page

  Composer and Sound Designer, Busty Beatz

  Design Intern, Maeli Cherel

  Stage Manager, Lauren Tulloh

  CHARACTERS

  JOHN GREEN, late 20s–early 30s, Anglo-Indian Australian with brown skin

  SANDY, late 20s–early 30s, Indigenous Australian woman with dark brown skin

  BRONWYN, 55, John’s mother, Anglo-Indian with fair skin

  LIVVY, 10, John’s little sister, Anglo-Indian Australian with fair skin

  DANNO, late 20s, John’s best friend, Australian male, caucasian, redhead

  JANELLE BURNS, late 20s, John’s girlfriend, blonde caucasian Australian

  ANIL DIXIT THE THIRD, 40s–50s, male, Indian film director

  MERLE OBERON, the ghost of the 1940’s Hollywood actress

  MANA, 55, Sandy’s father, Maori with dark brown skin

  GAV, owner of Cockney Convict Walking Tours, Australian, caucasian

  HEATHER, 50s, Anglo-Indian woman with dark brown skin

  GUILLAUME GUILLOTINE, a French photographer

  RECEPTIONIST, ‘Bondi Parade’ production receptionist

  RENEE Brogan, 45, Executive Producer of ‘Bondi Parade’, caucasian woman

  CITY OF SYDNEY PRODUCER

  DOCTOR

  INDIAN PRESS PERSON 1

  INDIAN PRESS PERSON 2

  FANNY & DICKY, two budgerigars

  OLIVIA LOOK-ALIKE, a fantasy of Bronwyn’s

  The play can be performed by six actors, with roles distributed as follows:

  Actor 1: JOHN GREEN

  Actor 2: SANDY

  Actor 3: BRONWYN

  Actor 4: LIVVY / MERLE OBERON / DANNO / HEATHER

  Actor 5: JANELLE / RECEPTIONIST / OLIVIA LOOK-ALIKE / RENEE / GAV / CITY OF SYDNEY PRODUCER / INDIAN PRESS PERSON 1

  Actor 6: ANIL / GUILLAUME / MANA / DOCTOR / INDIAN PRESS PERSON 2

  DANNO could be played by an additional actor (Actor 7) and a caucasian male redhead actor could be cast as this role. He would also double up as Gav and City OF Sydney Producer.

  We encourage anyone producing and casting this work to consider performers from diverse backgrounds, including for roles where a character’s ethnic or cultural background, age, gender, sexuality or disability need not be specified.

  This play went to press before the end of rehearsals and may differ from the play as performed.

  ACT ONE

  SCENE ONE

  JOHN sits onstage, pumicing his brown skin with a pumice stone. A ouija board is in front of him. He eventually puts the pumice stone on the ouija board.

  JOHN: I call upon the powers that be and ask whatever’s up there beyond the Southern Cross to please hear me. I apologise for losing the movable pointer and hope you’ll accept this pumice stone as a way to inform me of any guidance. Please, Southern Cross. Help me: I must star in ‘Bondi Parade’.

  SCENE TWO

  BRONWYN enters. She has bleached blonde hair and wears a skin-tight black outfit. She’s holding a large postage package.

  BRONWYN: Good. This batch has aloe vera in it. That should work well with the bleach.

  LIVVY enters. She has a football down her school uniform, pretending to be pregnant, and is holding a small ghetto blaster. She wheels a huge birdcage onstage. It has two budgies in it—FANNY and DICKY. The abnormally large-sized budgies are humans dressed as budgies wearing budgie smugglers. There is a breeding box attached to the cage. FANNY and DICKY do an odd interpretative mating dance—but they don’t mate. BRONWYN hides her package behind her back.

  LIVVY: Come on, Fanny. Get on a move on, Dicky. What song will make you root?

  LIVVY plays an Olivia Newton-John song on her ghetto blaster. JOHN enters. He’s wearing a convict outfit.

  JOHN: Mum, can you get me blue contact lenses for my ‘Bondi Parade’ audition?

  LIVVY: Mum …

  BRONWYN: Blue? We agreed to only use green ones, darling … goes with our family brand.

  JOHN: I need blue.

  BRONWYN: Why?

  LIVVY: It’s not easy being green …

  JOHN: If I don’t get this role in ‘Bondi Parade’, I’ll inject blue paint into my eyes.

  BRONWYN: Blue cornea tattoos are so Korean. Go green, darling.

  JOHN: Please, Mum. All the cast have blue eyes. I need to look like them.

  LIVVY: Mum …

  BRONWYN: No, darling, to succeed you must stand out (while fitting in). Green means go. Now go to work.

  LIVVY: Mum …

  BRONWYN: Whaaaat?! Bloody kids, I feel a pain in my womb!

  LIVVY: Don’t shout. You’ll scare my budgies and then they’ll never root. If I can lay an egg … why can’t Fanny?

  BRONWYN: Ha! Finally I can look forward to being a grand-MILF.

  LIVVY: Mum …

  JOHN: Mum, why do you have pics of me and Janelle on your laptop?

  BRONWYN: Oh. I’ve found the most amazing website. It’s called Genetics Spawn.

  JOHN: Porn?

  BRONWYN: No. Spawn. Genetics Spawn. If you upload a picture of yourself and another person … it shows you what your children will look like. Your babies with Janelle will be so beautiful, Johnny. Look! So sweet. So fair and lovely.

  JOHN: Danno and I are going to a beer garden in Bondi to listen to the Hottest 100 after work.

  BRONWYN: Make sure you wear a hat and sunscreen. Have you not got your green contacts in?

  JOHN: My eyes are sore. I’ll put them on at work.

  BRONWYN: Put them on now please. They cost me a fortune. You look so much more handsome with green eyes, darling.

  LIVVY: Mum …

  JOHN: I want blue.

  BRONWYN: You’re getting green. Go to your room and put them on now.

  JOHN exits.

  LIVVY: Mum?

  BRONWYN: Pain in my womb! Whaaaat?!

  LIVVY: So can Ming-Wa, Rosa and Fatima come over to watch ‘Bondi Parade’?

  BRONWYN: No they cannot. I need the lounge room free.

  LIVVY: For what?

  BRONWYN: For my aerobics. Did you mess with the remote controls again, Livvy?

  LIVVY: No.

  BRONWYN: Liar. Pain in my womb. Play disc four for me? Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits Volume Two.

  LIVVY: Can I watch the ep of ‘Bondi Parade’ that I set the timer for yesterday?

  BRONWYN: You’ve got school, Livvy. Besides—it’s O.N.J. time. Olivia Newtown-John. Turn it on. Do it. Xanadu-it.

  LIVVY: So, can Ming-Wa, Rosa and Fatima come over to watch ‘Bondi Parade’ this arvo?

  BRONWYN: Oh, Livvy, isn’t one foreign friend enough?

  LIVVY: Mum. Ming-Wa’s Burmese. Rosa’s Panamanian and Fatima’s a Lebanese Jew. But they’re all born here.

  BRONWYN: Stop fabricating foreigners, darling. No such thing as a Lebanese Jew.

  LIVVY: Yes there is. I saw it on ‘Foreigner Correspondent’.

  BRONWYN: Bloody ABC, that’s what you get f
rom funding cuts. Trashy TV. Whatever happened to those lovely twins, Karen and Sharon McLaren?

  LIVVY: You kicked them out ’cause they were Siamese twins, remember?

  BRONWYN That’s right. Siamese. Darling, how many times must I tell you, never trust a country that hasn’t been colonised. The only Asians you should be mingling with are cauc-asians.

  LIVVY: Ming-Ling—oh yeah, I forgot to invite her. She’s the new Tibetan exchange student.

  BRONWYN: What did they exchange her for? A llama?

  LIVVY: I didn’t ask Alana … can she come too?

  BRONWYN: Alana, now that’s more promising. What’s her last name?

  LIVVY: Riskybitz.

  BRONWYN: Is that Jewish?

  LIVVY: No, Russian.

  BRONWYN: White Russian?

  LIVVY: No, black Russian.

  BRONWYN: Tell her to bugger off—we’re full.

  SCENE THREE

  JOHN is searching for his green contact lenses. MERLE OBERON crashes on stage in a large puff of powder.

  MERLE: Conceal. Conceal. Conceal.

  JOHN: I forgot to take my Xanax.

  MERLE: Be thankful I’m even here.

  JOHN: What the hell?

  MERLE: This isn’t a hallucination. I’m here to recruit—I mean to assist you!

  JOHN: You are? Do you know where my green contacts are then?

  MERLE: Third drawer behind the Blonde Babes magazines.

  JOHN: Oh. Thanks.

  MERLE: Am I in Tasmania?

  JOHN: No. You’re in Greystanes.

  MERLE: Good Lord. Where the hell is that?

  JOHN: It’s in between Parramatta and Blacktown. Who the hell are you?

  MERLE: I helped Cliff Richard top the charts. I suggested Englebert Humperdinck as a stage name … Humperdinck! Pure genius?! But my greatest triumph … I got Ben Kingsley the role of Gandhi.

  JOHN: Gandhi, what’s that got to do with me?

  MERLE: He was one of the world’s greatest game changers! I was puzzled by him at the time. So much positive power in a pocket-sized package. Now I must tell the truth for the first time. I’m here to recruit the new Gandhi. If I don’t, I’ll never pass through. I must find the chosen one!

  JOHN: Are you a casting agent?

  MERLE: Yes. No. Only half-caste! You’re my last chance. My last assignment.

  JOHN: Chance of what?

  MERLE: You’re the tour guide, correct?

  JOHN: Only part-time. I’m really an actor.

  MERLE: Heed my wisdom, and one day you will be a great star like him—then you’ll use pure powder rather than putrid pumice.

  JOHN: You’re a star?

  MERLE: Surely you recognise me, even in this terrible light?

  JOHN: Nope.

  MERLE: Dark Angel. 1935. Academy Award nomination.

  JOHN: I’d rather win a Logie.

  MERLE: Television. Uggh.

  JOHN: It’s my favourite medium.

  MERLE: I’m your favourite medium. Merle Oberon. Hollywood’s forgotten screen siren. What a privilege it is for you to meet me.

  JOHN: Merle Oberon.

  MERLE: John Green. Right now you’re a tour guide. I’m … a spirit guide. We all must play our roles.

  JOHN: So you’re here to help me?

  MERLE: Indeed.

  JOHN: Then help me star in ‘Bondi Parade’.

  MERLE: I love a parade!

  JOHN: ‘Bondi Parade’s an Aussie soap opera.

  MERLE: I adore the opera!

  JOHN: It’s a TV show. My audition’s next month. Is that long enough for you to weave your magic?

  MERLE: Hmmm.

  JOHN: Look, I’ve got a life-sized framed poster signed by the original cast, my most prized possession … and each star’s headshot arranged on the ceiling in the shape of my favourite constellation … the Southern Cross!

  MERLE: You don’t look like these ‘Bondi Parade’ actors, do you?

  JOHN: What?

  MERLE: You don’t fit into the Southern Cross, do you?

  JOHN: No. I don’t. Help me. Humperdinck me.

  SCENE FOUR

  Australia Day. JOHN enters, dressed as a convict. He is leading a tour group.

  JOHN: G’day, everyone! ’Appy Australia Day! Welcome to Cockney Convict Walking Tours. I’m Jolly John, your convict tour guide extraordinaire. I don’t want to shackle you up and torture you with colonial history, but it’s important to know this very spot where the First Fleet of convicts like me arrived two hundred and twenty-eight years ago—

  SANDY, an Indigenous woman with dark brown skin, interrupts JOHN.

  SANDY: What a load of rubbish.

  JOHN: Um. Excuse me. I’m in the middle of a tour here. As I was saying— [Back to his tour group] It was right here at Sydney Cove where the first ships—

  SANDY: It wasn’t here. It was at Botany Bay. Get your facts straight!

  JOHN: Most of us convicts barely stole a loaf of bread. And before we knew it—our lives were toast. On this very day, the twenty-sixth of January, Australia was—

  SANDY: Don’t listen to him, guys. And it wasn’t the twenty-sixth, it was the twenty-first. You want the real story? Here are some flyers.

  She hands out flyers to the audience.

  JOHN: Okay—let’s take a ten-minute break. We’ll continue the tour then. Fanks, guys. See you in a bit. [To SANDY] I don’t get paid enough to deal with this crap. You’re really rude, you know that. I was doing a show.

  SANDY: Your ‘facts’ are just fiction!

  JOHN: I’m pretty sure that the ships first landed here at Circular Quay.

  SANDY: All you’re doing is regurgitating the Euro version of our history.

  JOHN: And that’s why we’re allowed in Eurovision. ’Cause we’re a European colony.

  SANDY: You know nothing.

  JOHN: No. I’m just a lowly convict.

  SANDY: What were you convicted of? Overacting?

  JOHN: You should be convicted for over re-acting. Why were you recording me?

  SANDY: I’m taking Cockney Convicts down. You shouldn’t be allowed to operate. I’m starting a new tour company. We’ll be giving historical Indigenous dance tours of The Rocks, and we’re telling the real story.

  JOHN: Tour guiding? This is our turf. We’ve been here for twenty years. You’re stealing our intellectual property.

  SANDY: You stole our actual property.

  JOHN: I was in character.

  SANDY: You call that a character?

  JOHN: My boss says that the script’s fully researched and authentic. You’re wasting your money. The Rocks doesn’t need two tour guide companies.

  SANDY: It’s not my money. It’s sponsored by the City of Sydney.

  JOHN: Really? When do you launch?

  SANDY: Next month.

  JOHN: I doubt you’ll get any customers.

  SANDY: Game on.

  JOHN: Well, happy Australia Day.

  SANDY: Happy Independence Day.

  JOHN: What?

  SANDY: Isn’t it Indian Republic Day today?

  JOHN: How would I know?

  SANDY: While Australia celebrates British arrival, India celebrates their departure. Both on the twenty-sixth of January. Kinda ironic, isn’t it?

  JOHN: You’ve lost me.

  SANDY: The British government kicked you convicts out of their country to colonise this one. They dumped their crap all over our land. They call it colonisation, more like colonic irrigation. They did it in India too.

  JOHN: I’m not Indian.

  SANDY: Oh. It’s just all of the Indian restaurants in town have been celebrating Independence today.

  GAV enters.

  GAV: John, can I have a word please?

  JOHN: Sure, Gav.

  GAV: Look, mate, you know I think you’re a diamond. It’s just—

  JOHN: Gav. I know.

  GAV: You do?

  JOHN: Yeah. This lady just told me. She’s starting a—

  GAV: Listen
, mate, there’s no easy way to say this, mate. I’m getting pressured to hire another actor to play the Cockney convict. I’m gonna have to … to …

  JOHN: What?

  GAV: I really want Cockney Convict Walking Tours to be an authentic and realistic company. Real convicts just wouldn’t have looked like you, John. I’m sorry.

  JOHN: What about Spyro? He’s been playing Captain Cook for years but he’s Greek.

  GAV: It’s different, mate.

  JOHN: How?

  GAV: Well, he passes as— Look, sorry, mate, but you just don’t fit the bill. Convicts didn’t look like you do.

  JOHN: [in a Cockney accent] They might ’ave after six months at sea. Plus at least I sound the part innit?

  GAV: Yeah, mate, but the punters were asking how did a chocolate convict end up in Australia?

  JOHN: I’ve worked here for years, Gav. I really need this job.

  GAV: I’m really sorry, John. Today’s your last tour of duty. Tell you what, I’ll let ya keep your convict costume as a souvenir.

  SANDY: Are you gonna let him get away with this?

  JOHN: It’s a great costume.

  SANDY: [to GAV] You. Gavin, is it?

  GAV: Yeah, who are you?

  SANDY: Never you mind. Is this the way you treat your loyal staff?

  GAV: Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but I don’t want any trouble. This is difficult enough as it is.

  SANDY: Gavin, hey? Interesting name. Welsh origin. Meaning ‘white hawk’. That sounds about right. High-flying predator preying on the innocent. If you don’t offer him some sort of retrenchment package, this lady hawk will kick your backside from here to Crows Nest.

  GAV: Ah, John … um … if you drop by the office tomorrow, I think we might have some sort of retrenchment package lying around. Sorry again, mate.

  SANDY: That’s better. Much better.

  GAV exits.

  JOHN: You just Judge Judied him off your turf, Mrs Heckler!

  SANDY: I’m still a Miss, thank you, Jolly John.

  JOHN: That was amazing! Thank you so much.

  SANDY: You’re welcome.

  JOHN: I can’t believe he fired me.

  SANDY: Retrenched now.

  JOHN: God, I can’t believe they called me a chocolate convict. Sounds like an Arnott’s biscuit. ‘Come and have a cup of tea and a chocolate convict bikky.’ I loved those gollywog biscuits.