Fearless

Mirra Todd

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781760620608
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Fearless investigates the many portals of loneliness. Ten characters inhabit the world of Fearless. Each character flinches at a point in their lives. In that moment, each life is unexpectedly hurled off its normal pat into an emotional abyss. Fearless begins at this juncture where redemption, recovery, release or relapse is but an inch from each person's grasp.

PROLOGUE

As the audience enter, the theatre is already populated: four people in isolation living in the smallness of their lives. DOG-TAG is eating cereal in his chair. CLIPPER looking at the Business Review waiting for a bus. CHIKA is counting drugs. MUT-DOG is sitting on the street, muttering in agitation as he does up his bootlaces. GIZMO is there, reading through the form guide.

LOTTE is illuminated in The Hell Room.

LOTTE: How do you think it feels to be shunned by all and sick of your own company?

How do you think it feels to be invisible when you’re desperate to be seen?

When the only face that looks you in the eye is your own worn out reflection

And she don’t ever even smile at you

Just turns away disgusted, wants no connection

Ooooooooh, baby, something’s got to give

C’mon, c’mon, baby, I’m just trying to live

How do you think it feels when everybody thinks you’re dirty, filthy scum?

And the few rare times that you go to speak the people turn and run

How do you think it feels to live in the street and let’s face it, who calls that living?

To be treated like a social disease, a mortal sin that won’t be forgiven

Oooh, baby, something’s got to give

C’mon, c’mon, baby, I’m just trying to live

Don’t be so spineless

Just give some kindness

You think I’m cheerless

Baby I’m fearless

Yeah maybe I’m starving

Starving for loving

Don’t be so cheerless

Step up and be fearless.

Loneliness makes finger puppets of us all.

DOG-TAG: Rat-a-tat-tat.

PT: Thwack.

CRYSTAL: Puff.

PEPPER: Scratch.

CRYSTAL: Puff.

CLIPPER: Blah.

GIZMO: Ka-ching!

CARLOTTA: Ha!

Welcome into The Hell Room.

GIZMO is illuminated at the microphone

GIZMO: Come on into The Hell Room,

It’s easy to enter though you may not leave too soon,

Lights are bright in The Hell Room,

The flashing colours belie the rising gloom,

Bells are ringing in The Hell Room,

Pretty soon they’ll be singing a sour tune,

Something takes you over in The Hell Room.

Demons and entities begin to croon,

Lost your way in The Hell Room.

With the smell of dismay, and impending doom.

You can shed a tear in The Hell Room.

As desperation, regret and despair begin to loom,

If you give your life to The Hell Room.

It will make a sad, lonely and darkening tomb.

When you’ve lost it all in The Hell Room.

You can’t get it back, and part of you remains in / the womb of…

Transition: CRYSTAL smoking a cigarette.

CRYSTAL: Puff.

From the shadows we hear:

PEPPER: Scratch.

GIZMO: Ka-ching!

PT: Thwack.

CLIPPER: Blah.

MUT-DOG: Howls.

CRYSTAL: It’s the living that kills. Living kills you all the way to dead. Every time. No bang. No swish. Just a puff, and— My husband never smoked a day in his— My husband. The C word! It’s the living that— Smoking makes me feel like I’m not alone, like the smoke somehow fills that part of me that is / dead too.

LOTTE: Come on into The Hell Room.

MUT-DOG: Howls...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Playwright’s Biography
• Introduction
• Playwright’s Note
• Inside the Hell Room
• First Production
• Characters
• Fearless
• Copyright Details