Zoo and Twelve Comic Monologues for Women

Lily Bevan

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848429437
• eBook ISBN: 9781788503259
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

At Miami's Cherokee Valley Zoo & Conservation Centre, the most dangerous thing that ever happened was the tapir's caesarian section. That is until Hurricane Jonas sets itself on a crash course straight towards it. Now zookeeper Bonnie must rush to batten down the hatches and ensure the safety of her animals – and herself.

Halfway across the world in the Yorkshire Dales, Bonnie's friend Carol feels the repercussions of that tempestuous night. Will she be able to help from afar? Or will the danger they all face turn out to be deeper and darker than a spot of bad weather?

Lily Bevan's play Zoo is a wildly inventive comedy drama about courage, female friendship and flamingos. It premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018, where it was selected as one of the Guardian's Best Shows of the Fringe. It also enjoyed London runs at Theatre503 and the 2020 VAULT Festival.

This edition also includes twelve comic monologues for female performers, some of which featured in the BBC Radio 4 series, Talking to Strangers (co-written with Sally Phillips), and were performed by Olivia Colman, Jessica Hynes and Emma Thompson, amongst others.

'Lily Bevan is one of the most consistently astonishing writers of her generation. She has an imagination like no other and her relationship with words is like a marriage between Flaubert and Spike Milligan' Emma Thompson

PART ONE

Sound of rising animal cacophony. Squawking, wings beating, hissing, roaring, scratching, screeching. Wind, rain.

Sound of bats in a cave.

Cherokee Valley Zoo, Miami. The Clearing.

A sign reads ‘Cherokee Valley Zoo’. Stacks of emergency sandbags.

Wednesday. 4 p.m. BONNIE is being filmed by a CNN camera crew for a special on Hurricane Jonas. It’s still sunny. BONNIE holds a clipboard with a list of tasks written on it. She wears zoo overalls, a bumbag with animal feed inside, wellies and sunglasses. She is upbeat.

News jingle.

BONNIE (to the camera crew). Wow. This is pretty exciting to be on CNN. This is pretty cool.

Filming begins.

INTERVIEWER. So live from Miami Florida, as Hurricane Jonas gathers momentum, we are on the ground at a local zoo. Thank you for speaking with us. Can you tell us what you are doing to prepare for the hurricane?

BONNIE. Hello. My name is Bonnie Young, I’m an animal curator here at Cherokee Valley Zoo and Conservation Centre in Miami. And I love my job. We are a small zoo – we have about two hundred animals. My role is to talk to the public about all our cool animals. But. Today – Hurricane Jonas is on his merry way towards us. ‘Every cloud engenders not a storm’ – that’s William Shakespeare. He’s my favourite writer. Anyway these clouds do. (Checks watch.) It’s 4 p.m. We are currently two hundred and ten miles from the eye of the storm. It has made landfall in San Juan. So we’ve only got a few more hours of prep. I’m about halfway through my list. Hurricane Jonas is supposed to be pretty bad. The worst yet. This is gonna be quite a night. I mean – things can get pretty intense at the zoo even on normal days! I remember when some kids won a competition to visit our onsite veterinary clinic – that was the day our pregnant tapir needed an emergency caesarean section, so we took the kids in to watch – there was a lot of blood and one of the kids vomited and passed out. And the tapir died. But her baby lived. Kevin.

Did you know tapirs can only poop in water? That is true.

INTERVIEWER. I did not know that, no.

BONNIE. We’re an ethical zoo which means we mainly take in animals rescued from bad environments like circuses and rehabilitate them, and we participate in some national breeding programmes for endangered species. So – I am going to make sure these guys get through the storm just fine. Hurricane Ivan last year was a pretty big storm for us and we took a pretty big hit from Ivan. But most of our animals made it through okay. We did lose a pair of Humboldt penguins and a whooping crane. Which was super sad. But Hurricane Jonas will be worse. He’s big and tough, so we need to be ready for him. Wait a sec, they are just dropping off some cages.

Shift.

CAROL is in a classroom of children in Yorkshire. The audience are the children.

CAROL wears a corduroy gilet, jeans, wellies, a name tag and bat ears. She is downbeat.

CAROL. Thank you, Miss Morris. I’m waiting. I’m waiting. I’m not starting till they’re quiet. Right, children. That’s better. I’ll do my bit and you do yours – silence. Good morning. I am Carol Alsop from the North Yorkshire Bat Group. We are on call to help injured and stranded bats. I survey roosts and habitats, and study bat data in the Malton Town Field Centre.

Now, if there’s one thing a member of the North Yorkshire Bat Group can’t abide. Cannot abide. ’Tis a member of the South Yorkshire Bat Group – meddling. And they do. Bugger them. Excuse me, Miss Morris.

None of that. Now, if you’re quiet and good I’ll show you something special. No. Not till you’re quiet… There we go. Now stay very quiet, and still. (Scary.) Still.

CAROL retrieves a cardboard box, and slowly lifts out a small bat.

Now this is a common pipistrelle bat. This is the smallest bat found in Europe. She’s from our local matriarchal colony. She echolocates at a frequency of forty-five kilohertz. Echolocates? That’s the sound it makes finding its way about. Too high for us to hear, but if we could – it sounds like this.

CAROL echolocates.

Do not laugh. Now I’m going to give the bat to Miss Morris here to hold. You’re not nervous, are you, Miss Morris? (She is.) No. You’re not. Now you hold it very gently there hold your hands like this… that’s it…

No, she hasn’t got a name.

You can name her if you want, she won’t know. Katie? Ariana Grande? What? That’s not a real name. Okay. Fine.

Just keep your hands still, Miss Morris. Everyone have a little look at the bat, quietly.

Shift.

BONNIE (carrying animal crates). – Sorry about that. Everyone asks Bill, our manager: ‘At what stage of the hurricane do you evacuate the animals?’ – We are actually never going to evacuate. The path of a hurricane can change quickly, and transporting an animal could actually mean moving it into more danger. Moving an animal can also cause it extreme anxiety. Enough to kill it. Which would defeat the point. Of moving it. Wanna see something cool?

Shift.

CAROL. Whilst you’re having a look – let’s have a little chat about bats. So. Question one. Why might people be scared of bats? Yes, You. With the big head.

‘Bats are big and scary and suck blood and get stuck in your hair.’ Yes, that’s a common fear. But look at our little friend, Ariana Grande, here? In fact all Yorkshire bats are small, from the size of my thumb up to the size of a hamster. They are shy and have no interest at all in your hair or your blood. Look how small the bat is.

Shift.

BONNIE (holding a snake). Look how big the snake is. (Snake hisses.) This is a Great Basin gopher snake. He does not like this weather. A stressed snake – you want to watch both ends. When this guy gets anxious he’s going to emit a noxious paste from his anus. (Putting snake in a crate.) Well – except obviously he doesn’t have an anus, from his cloaca – so that’s for pee and poop and sex. All for one and one for all! Anyway. If that stuff gets on your clothes you have to throw them away. I lost a lovely pair of pants that route.

INTERVIEWER. So, where do the animals ride out the hurricane?

BONNIE. The big animals stay in bunkers in their own enclosures. The fish stay in the aquarium, the birds stay where they are. But the smaller animals are put into these cages and crates I’m preparing and moved in to the clubhouse. The clubhouse is a concrete office building. It is at the highest point in the zoo, so we’ve never had flooding in the clubhouse yet. We call it The Ark.

Tigers roar.

That’s the tigers! Rodney and Roland – they can be hard to move, but Mary’ll tempt them with a Snickers and they’ll follow her.

The state has issued an evacuation order for 8 p.m. – so Mary and I, and Ian and Bill and the team will have to be out by eight, then we’ll come back tomorrow after the storm, clean up the debris and get everyone fed.

A Jeep drives past.

That’s Ian Butterwick in his Jeep. Before he was just heading up the giant otter conservation programme but he’s just been promoted to Zoo Co-ordinator. Which is… fine.

INTERVIEWER. Should we talk to him?

BONNIE. No. You don’t need to talk to him. Ian’s probably heading over to lock up Tia the elephant. Tia is a sweetheart. She’s six years old. After that he should be heading to the nocturnal house. Did you know sloths are the only animals who do not fart? They can internally absorb methane and breathe it out. Kind of like a mouth fart. Pretty cool, huh.

Want to know a secret? I have a best friend at this zoo and it’s Arthur the Anteater. Arthur has a disgusting infection. Poor Arthur was being treated at the onsite veterinary clinic but he will be the first to go into the clubhouse this afternoon.

A peahen squawks past.

Hi, Sandra! She roams free in the zoo. Some animals can withstand hurricanes just fine on their own. Peacocks for example, because they are used to monsoons in India. Sandra our peahen is very self-sufficient. In fact, I’ve always wanted to get to know her a little better, but she’s super-private. Aren’t you, missy?

INTERVIEWER. Well, that’ll do it.

BONNIE. You’re all done. Cool. Happy to help. I’d better get back to work. You get going ahead of the hurricane. Go home and get cosy and watch The Wizard of Oz, or Twister or some storm-related film! Hey – Your producer asked me to document the rest of my prep for you on this personal bodycam? (Gestures to a small camera hooked on her bumbag.)

INTERVIEWER. If that’s not a problem?

BONNIE. No, it’s no problem. So, I’ll give you the footage after the storm?

INTERVIEWER. That’d be awesome.

BONNIE. Sure. Is it on?

INTERVIEWER. Yeah.

BONNIE. So, I’ll be like – (Over the top/loud.) ‘Can you see that over there? That is the clubhouse.’

INTERVIEWER. Just ignore it. More normal.

BONNIE. Oh, more normal? Sorry. So I can just wear it and do my thing?

INTERVIEWER. We really need to go.

BONNIE. Sure. So, I’ve done steps one to five of my prep.

Shift.

CAROL. What do you mean she’s not nice? Do you think it’s nice for the bat to come here? Nice for me? No. But it’s part of my job – the school visits – so keep your hands held up, with a bit of a gap between the fingers there so… Ariana Grande can breathe. Christ. You alright? You look a bit flushed, Miss Morris. See she’s fine though, isn’t she, class? Nothing to fear from bats. Speak up. Are you mutes? No? So, where were we? How can such a small animal be that important?

What a fantastic question, Carol. Bats are important because they are insectivores, they feed on huge numbers of insects. They are saving the cotton industry in southern Texas twenty-two billion dollars every year because they eat the moths that lay eggs which turn into caterpillars on the plants. Twenty-two billion dollars. You can buy a lot of caffe lattes at Nero’s for that. Little joke for you there...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Original Production
• Thanks
• Dedication
• Characters
• Zoo
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information