Stacy

Jack Thorne

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781780015873
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Rob finds life confusing in a world of unwritten rules. If there's no one around to tell him right from wrong, except for a copy of FHM and a call-centre supervisor, he just has to guess. But he's never been very lucky, and sometimes he gets his guesses very wrong.

Jack Thorne's play Stacy is a darkly confessional monologue for one male performer and a slide projector. It was first performed at the Arcola Theatre, London, in February 2007.

STACY

For Chris Hannan

Stacy was first performed at the Arcola Theatre, London, on 6 February 2007, performed by Arthur Darvill.

Director	Hamish Pirie
Designer	Beck Rainford
Lighting Designer	David Plater
Composers	Max and Ben Ringham
Sound Designer	Helen Atkinson

The play was subsequently revived at the Trafalgar Studios, London, on 2 October 2007, performed by Ralf Little.

Stacy was originally workshopped in front of an audience at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, where it was performed by Tommy Mullins, directed by Carrie Cracknell, produced by Hush Productions and resourced by the National Theatre of Scotland.

Characters

ROB, 26, ordinary-looking

A SLIDE PROJECTOR

ROB is sitting on a chair, beside him is a slide projection unit.

Up on the projector as the audience enter is a picture of Stacy, 25 – Stacy is pretty and made-up to look like she doesn’t care. She’s wearing a funny smile (because she says she doesn’t like having her photo taken).

ROB holds the slide gun in his hand; sometimes he operates the machine and sometimes it’s done automatically. Every time a slide changes the machine makes a loud noise.

A man at the back gives a thumbs-up to show ROB he can start talking. ROB acknowledges the hand and then starts.

I was at Stacy’s street by about 7.15…

He presses the slide gun, it shows a picture of a street.

…and the air was the sort of evening mist you sometimes get which you know is bad for you. Anyway, a car came around the corner and I actually pulled out of the headlights of it, so… I don’t know why. But she lived at Number 33b.

Slide – a numbered tile – ‘33b’.

The road wasn’t one with odds on one side and evens on the other, it went chronologically up one side and then just swapped over the road and carried on counting up over there. Which made it further to walk to Number 33.

Slide – an Olympic walker looking knackered.

ROB turns and looks at it and laughs.

I’d bought a bottle of wine too (and I couldn’t find an off-licence so I paid pub prices for it, which shows I was desperate to make a good impression, particularly as I knew she had wine in, half of which I’d paid for), so part of me wanted to get her pissed, and… seduce her – which wasn’t likely by the way – and sort it out that way.

I did have this thing I was planning to say though…

Slide – Hugh Grant.

He turns and looks again and laughs.

‘I’m the sort of guy who falls in love really easily, honestly I am, I can fall in love in a night, but that’s not the same as what I’m feeling now and I honestly didn’t realise it till last night. I’d like to just try and behave like more than friends, just to see if it works, because things have changed now, and I know you probably don’t fancy me (though she’d been wet during the sex so I obviously was okay) but…’

And then I’d just leave it hanging at the end. Like that isn’t me not finishing the speech, that is the speech. A cheesy and very very pathetic speech but at least she’ll have to respond to it. She won’t be interested in a relationship but it’s not about that, she’ll have to respond to it, basically, and I don’t mind being humiliated.

Basically, she could still respond with ‘Let’s not talk about it now’; that’s a worst case scenario. Because I can’t say ‘I want to talk about it now’ without sounding like a dick. Then when I bought it up at some future appropriate date with ‘Are you ready to talk about it now?’, she’d probably respond with, ‘Let’s leave it, the past is the past’– she loves phrases like that. Ones you can write on your forehead, do you know what I mean? But that’s the worst case scenario.

I stop at gate 17,

Slide – a numbered tile ‘17’.

because I want to think about my speech, but eventually I get to 33b

Slide – a numbered tile ‘33b’.

and I stop there as well. She wouldn’t be home yet anyway, because she doesn’t get home till eight most of the time on weeknights (I’m home at 5.30 – another advantage of my job, and I don’t leave the house till 8.30 whereas she’s out by eight at the latest). But it probably wouldn’t be a great idea to wait outside the house for her to come home, so I ring the bell and hope the landlord or Shona’s in,

Slide – Shona’s face. She’s slightly overweight and she isn’t ugly but she isn’t confident either so the good bits of her face tend to be pretty well hidden.

as I have no idea what she does and I certainly have no idea what the landlord does so it could be either of them are in. I don’t even have an idea why Shona

Slide – Shona.

and Stacy

Slide – Stacy.

are living together, but I think, THINK, this might be Shona’s rental.

Slide – Shona.

I think she signed the lease from Mr Martin and Stacy’s

Slide – Stacy.

living in it via Shona,

Slide – Shona.

and just took it through Time Out or whatever. I bet she’s paying ‘mate’s rates’ though – the thing about Stacy

Slide – Stacy.

is she’s a brilliant negotiator. Even if Shona

Slide – Shona.

didn’t know her before. So I ring on the door but Shona doesn’t answer so I just wait in the cold, on their tiny tiny porch, and I have to take my coat off to sit on because I’m not sitting on the ground, not with an arse like mine.

Slide – Charlie Chaplin – in The Kid – sitting on a kerbedge.

They’re 33b but actually there’s no separate entrance for A or B, in fact there is no A, it’s 33 and 33b. B is just the second floor and you have to walk through A’s front room to get to the staircase to get up there. Apparently it’s illegal for them to be sold like that but it’s only renting; the people in A, or the one person in A – Mr Martin – owns B as well. I sit on the step in front of the door, and sort of on top of my coat, it’s not exactly comfy but my arse is warm.

I started getting piles aged fourteen and I didn’t tell anyone for ages, and tried to deal with it myself, I even went to a chemist to buy some pile cream and the chemist believed it was for my gran. I read books on it secretly, books I took from the library, and I was even embarrassed for taking it then – which is the advantage of the internet now, for kids like that. Anyway I worked out it was sort of a piece that had popped out of my bum and to get it wet and then push it back in. I tried that in a hot bath, it worked, then the pile kept popping up again so I was constantly pushing it back in. Then my pile, when I was trying to shit, exploded, and you have never seen so much blood. I started howling, my mum

Slide – Mum. Unsmiling but pretty. She’s fiftyish and she dies her hair dark brown.

came in and tried to calm me down but she was more upset than she needed to be and she rushed me to casualty.

We got done by this really really junior doctor, and I think it would have been much worse for an older person (and Stacy’s

Slide – Stacy.

adventures in KY jelly with another doctor were far worse), and he put a lot of padding on it and told me to make an appointment with outpatients (and we did, but this is what my mum’s

Slide – Mum.

like: she broke the appointment, cancelled it, when she discovered I wasn’t bleeding any more, which I briefly wasn’t, but, actually I’m still bleeding till today, so… but she said she didn’t want to put me through getting the pile sewn up – they put a band around it – and that if it continued I could get it sorted out when I was older), and told me to eat more fibre, fruit and drink more water. But I already did loads of that, I think it was a reaction to my sister, or I do when I’m feeling dramatic… Like when I’m trying to do a speech like that…

I met a girl at a party and we were hardly talking at all but we got talking – it turns out she started her period really early; aged eight – and she sort of knew but sort of also thought she was bleeding to death (very very heavy flow – always has been – she said it disables her two days of the month, she can hardly move and she has to take them as holiday because her boss – a woman – says that regular illness is the invalid’s own responsibility – so she doesn’t get holiday – (Laughs.) the really weird thing about it was she was trying to chat me up I think). Anyway, it really shows up on the enamel of the toilet bowl – now, when it happens – I sit on a toilet seat and let it bleed because I can’t think of anything else to do.

Debbie

Slide – Debbie.

said actually not to… no, I’m not going to tell you that yet… No. Sorry.

Debbie’s

Blank slide.

from work. Another confusion actually…

Anyway, I phone my brother again,

Slide – brother. A lot better-looking than ROB, and he knows it.

and I never phone my brother, and he’s not in so I leave a message asking him to phone me. Then I phone my mum,

Slide – Mum.

and I get through. ‘Hello?’ – she always sounds as if she’s surprised that telephones actually work – I disconnect the call, I breathed into it for a few seconds but I didn’t have anything to say and she didn’t repeat ‘Hello?’ again, and she doesn’t know how to use 1471.

Anyway.

He turns to look at his mum, he stands up and walks slightly forward to the audience.

It started, with Stacy,

He indicates his mum’s picture, he doesn’t change the slide.

because she was upset, she’d asked for a hug, then she’d kissed me, I’d got an erection, she’d noticed – in fact she’d laughed and told me she noticed – and then it got passionate quite quickly.

I always actually worry I’m going to smell or something else – like one of the things girls seem to do more of now, is to put their hands inside your arse – now (a) I’ve had a lot of bleed...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information