This is a short play for five players that I wrote today. It’s pretty derivative of my last stupid short play, but maybe you’ve never read that. Fuck, maybe you’ll enjoy it anyway, because you’re crazy like that. A loose cannon, they say. There’s talk you’ll have to hand in your badge, thanks to your unorthodox methods, but you always get your man!
The scene: a lecture theatre somewhere in Norway. An elderly professor in a one-piece bathing suit is giving a lecture on the importance of attending lectures. One student is present, a gorilla is selling hot-dogs in the aisle.
Lecturer: So you see, none of you lazy bums will amount to anything unless you buckle down and buy my motivational tape series, entitled “how to attend lectures and ensure the respect of small animals.”
Gorilla: (loudly) Hot-dogs, get your hot-dogs here! You sir! Yes, you in the bathing suit. I think you’d appreciate a sauerkraut and mustard-topped hot-dog in a warm seasoned bun.
Lecturer: Why, you know, I rather would. How on earth did you know that?
Gorilla: (falsetto) I can read minds, it is a useful skill.
the gorilla idly finds a tick in its fur and eats it noisily
Student: But everyone knows that talking gorillas can’t read minds after the clocks go back, and according to this train timetable it’s mid-November!
Gorilla: You’re quite right, the cold causes simple simian brains to sieze up any time after the twenty-third of October. However, I am no gorilla!
two burly medical orderlies appear, stage-left, to the tune of the TV show “I Love Lucy” and unzip the gorilla costume, much to everyone’s dismay
Uri Gellar: (dismayed) I am actually Uri Gellar, french spiritualist and bender of spoons. I’m here making money selling snack foods while I avoid the pressures of incredible fame.
Student: (dismayed) But it’s the year 2005, you’ve not been famous for over a decade.
Uri Gellar: Good heavens, I must have overslept! I have to pay eight years’ worth of utility bills and thoroughly clean the cat’s litter tray.
Lecturer: What about my hot-dog?
Uri Gellar: I only told you all that to make you feel better, these hot-dogs are made of expensive plastic.
Lecturer: But I’m hungry now.
The student begins whistling the theme-music to ‘Porridge’
Uri Gelllar: Well, you could come back to my place, I have my own chef. He could make you a toasted bagel, or an otter stew.
Lecturer: My childhood home was destroyed by otters, I would love nothing more than to eat a stew made of their soft flesh!
Student: I had an otter once, he was named ‘Cecil-von-Trouser of Hartfel’.
All: That’s a pretty odd name for an otter!
Student: He was a pretty odd otter!
Raucous laughter, followed by a loud bang. The student drops dead, face frozen in a rictus grin. The curtain falls to the sound of rain.
